Category: bicycle racing

I had an inkling that I was in trouble.

It wasn’t panic – but I was starting to get worried.

One kilometre into a team time trial session and I already felt really bad.

Surely, my legs (and lungs) would come good soon…..

The truth hit me at the as we came out of ‘Blood Hill’ (this was after the descent!). The second rise on the road at to Peats Ridge flipped me past the red line.

Not only did I not make it to the 20km turn (this was all now by myself), a short turn to join my returning team mates did not help. I got spat out again as soon as the road went up.

It was a lonely suffer fest back to the finish line.

This was just over a week ago. In my 30 odd years of racing, I have only raced time trials two or three times. The results were worse than bad.

… And this is why I hate time trials. I much prefer ‘sucking wheels’ in a bunch – taking advantage of the draft from my larger racing colleagues.

This year, Paul convinced me to join him, Denis and George In the club time trial championships in the over 250 years combined category.

I went out and bought my very first TT bar.

The Sydney Metro championships – Penrith Lakes.

The race track at Penrith Lakes circles the man made lake that was built for the 2000 rowing Olympics. There are no hills – but the finish line comes after some tricky chicanes.

Mostly, you can look up or across the lake to see what is happening on the track – and also to judge how far the break is ahead.

So, most people would describe it as a ‘sprinter’s course’.

I can’t sprint. (I have many flaws, in case you haven’t noticed. Can’t sprint, Can’t time trial, Can’t ride hills…)

And that is probably the reason that I have never won a Metro championship.

But I have always lived in hope. If Steven Bradbury can get a gold medal against overwhelming odds… then there is always hope.

“…Some people grow old and wise – the rest just gets old”

Trevor put in a lone attack halfway in the first lap. He is the Australian champ in my age category.

I went after him.

We thought we had a gap. But soon, I heard heavy breathing behind me and shadows. They weren’t going to let us get away so easily.

Adam rode up to me at the end of that lap and asked “ who is the strong guy in the Aussie kit?”

“The strongest one in the race…” I shouted back at him. I hoped that it was loud enough for the others in the bunch to hear.

As we went into our second lap, everyone seemed to be on Trevor’s wheel.

When you have raced enough, you develop an instinct that sizes up the situation. And if you let your instincts take over, the state of ‘FLOW’ shuts down mind chatter.

I jumped the bunch from 5^th wheel. Trevor was at the front and I was counting on a hesitation from him.

A rider pulling along a bunch of ‘wheel suckers’ would instinctively think “Let some other bastard chase him…”

I settled in.

When you make an attack, you don’t look back. You just keep the watts going and try to get into a rhythm.

When I did take a peek… I had a good gap.

My hope was to have Trevor attack the bunch and bridge across. Then the two of us would have a chance to stay away.

Another lap in and still no one coming across.

Another 5 laps to go and I was not looking forward to riding all those by myself.

“Time trialling is an art”

This was the advice George and Paul gave me after I bombed out at Calga.

You get low. Your forearms are horizontal. And you just see a bit of road in front of you.

And you just suffer and pedal.

But you do get into a rhythm.

I had no TT bars. But I have discovered a position on the hoods that puts me into that streamlined position.

…And I just went for it.

With 3 laps to go, I had a minute gap.

“What’s the gap again?” I asked when I start the second last lap.

“45 seconds”

The sound of the bell is like an air hose to a drowning man. Only to be bettered by “still 44 seconds”.

Cruising through the chicanes for one last time… this time with no sprinters around me, I soft pedalled to the finish.

27 seconds later, the sprinters raced for silver.

I won the gold medal

…So what?

Without the story, a gold medal is just a coloured piece of fake metal.

Put the medal away and cherish the story.

Saturday 8^th July 2017.

It was a beautiful Sydney morning and freezing. Temperatures hung around 3 degrees as the sun’s waking rays hit the tops of the tallest buildings and slowly inched its way earthwards…

We had planned to do a Coluzzi ride with the slow bunch. For hundreds of Saturdays, we have gone for early morning rides.

This time, It was so cold and Dave decided that we should not wait for the bunch to come pass before we joined them. We would start riding and wait for them to catch us…

So we started off the highway – just the two of us. At times, we would take up the whole left lane and all we had were front lights that we needed to see where we were going, and flashing tail lights so that the speeding car drivers behind us did not mow us down.

We went through the airport tunnel and a patient motorist behind us allowed the negotiation of the tricky and dangerous exit merge.

We spoke about racing on Sunday – my birthday.

On how accidents can happen during racing…

We spoke about lots of things.

I was hanging on the tail end of the speeding bunch on the return leg. We were coming through Engadine on the Princes Highway and on the slight rise along the Dover place segment, Dave started dropping back on the left side after doing a turn on the front.

I shouted at him to get back on as I went past him.

A few seconds later, I heard the sickening sounds of metal, carbon fibre and soft tissue hitting the tarmac behind me. I had bad feelings as I stopped and rode back  to the tangle of bikes and bodies on the road.

I had a feeling that it was going to be Dave in massive trouble.

And it was.

Sunday 9^th July 2017.

It is another beautiful frosty Sydney morning.

Shirley had asked me a while back what I wanted for my grand 60^th birthday.

I said that all I wanted was to take the ‘little people’ to the snow. My grand kids have never seen snow before.

So, we spent most of last week at Perisher and Blue Cow.

In a last minute turn of events, Only Josh and Ashton could come. Ollie stayed home with her parents.

We made snowmen. Threw snow balls. And they boys learnt to ski.

This will be my most memorable birthday.

We live dangerous lives. When we end up on a hospital bed, all we will have will be memories.

Experiences create memories that last.

The latest expensive gifts, things and toys are easily forgotten.

At 60, life for me is a distilled collection of memories.

How much more birthdays after 60 does not matter.

What matters is how many more memories there are  left to create.

“Money doesn’t motivate me in the least. It’s an integral part of our life sure, but the day it defines you – you lose your other values.” (Day 13 – August 14)

http://www.maxacrossamerica.com/blog/day-8-14/day-13-august-14/

Maxim Hatton is a Queensland doctor.

Right now, he is just a lonely human being on a Giant doing a solo ride across USA. Whilst most of us ride for fun, Maxim is doing this to try to discover what the word ’value’ in life is all about…

I joked to Ian Jackson last week that while other cycling clubs have their club houses, the Waratahs just have an old van. But we organise the best masters racing in Sydney.

Currently, to get our van to our races, we have a dentist having to get up early every Sunday morning so that the race circuit and race management can be put in place. Then he has to wait until all the packing up has been done after the racing… so that he can get home late.

I am sure that if James Tan billed us his dental rate for the hours spend providing this service, we will have to charge a lot more for race entries. When we work out that we only pay $4.80 to participate in quality racing every Sunday (and with a chance of a prize at the end for some) – that is value.

The deputy Mayor of Auburn made news today. His lavish wedding shut down the entire street. People with money should be entitled to spend it whichever way they wish. The question is whether the money spend will bring any more value to the marriage. I guess only time will tell.

When Tom Cruise screamed Jerry Maguire’s ‘…show me the money!’, he voiced our fixation with money rather than value. Somehow the alternative ‘…show me the value!’ does not carry the same emotional energy.

Value and money are two totally different things (although they follow each other around all the time). The reason that value gets mixed up with money is because some smart economist started to use money to measure value. The reality is that there is no measure for value. Just like there is no measurement for ‘the stink of a fart’.

…or how do you value the Waratah Masters Cycling Club?

Our lonely cyclist Maxim Hatton has escaped the clutches of the money magnet and his blog as he pushes himself through the American landscape makes for some interesting reading. It is a look of the world from a set of eyes with a clarity reserved for those who have been through life and back.

A tiny start up company called Google set about to make it easy to search the vast resources of the internet. For a long time, it made no money. It just kept piling on its value for successful relevant searches for anyone who wanted to use its services for free.

Now it is worth a third of the whole of Australia!

The secret is not looking for the money. Value is where it starts. Money just seems to follow it.

I had just dropped Shirley off at the waiting bay outside Strathfield train station. With indicators blinking, I had a quick look at my rear vision mirror… and there was just one car on the traffic lane just driving past – so I let it go and slowly pulled out after it.

Two angry blasts of the horn jolted my eyes back to my wing mirror. A huge Mercedes had just popped up on my rear right. I had no idea how it got there so quickly… but I got the message that he was a bit pissed off by my bad driving.

Cyclists braving the roads get similar treatment by many car drivers. A person on a bike (innocently minding their own business) is seen as a hindrance rather than a legitimate road user.

We went down to Canberra over the weekend for a bit of family time. My two grandsons had a great time catching up with their uncles and we spent Sunday at the Questacon.

Josh (almost turning three), produced a serious look in the middle of playing and said “…I don’t like your At-ti-tude!”. It can be a bit alarming when you hear this from an adult – let alone from a toddler in nappies…You can really piss someone off by these words.

Le Tour is quite central to my daily routine and during the weekend, the most newsworthy was Frenchmen throwing piss on Chris Froome. Then there was the physical and verbal abuse at the Sky riders all thrown into the mix. .What should be admiration seems easily twisted into anger.

Imagine straining yourself mentally and physically to the limit. It is the best that you can produce. Yet, it pisses some people off. When nothing that you do is good enough, it can be mentally destroying. Let’s hope the Sky team can still continue to produce their best – despite the knockers.

Perhaps, it is because the Sky team has made cycle racing so much of a science that it has left their competitors scratching their heads. Science has a habit of showing us how fallible our sense of righteousness can be.

Questacon is quite a showcase of exhibits using science and technology to show us that much of what we think is right… is in fact somehow misguided. There is an exhibit that shows how you can take perfectly straight lines and make them seem curved – by just adding in some distractions.

Back to the honking car…

I had done a perfect exit from the waiting bay – yet it was nowhere good enough for the rampaging Mercedes.

Little Josh has little inkling about what an attitude is. You may think that he has an advanced vocabulary or that he was deliberately being cheeky.

It turns out that the phrase is contained in a nursery rhyme called “Little Bunny Foo Foo” that he sings at child care. A very simple reason – yet, can be misunderstood in many ways.

If science can prove that humans can see a straight line as curved, what hope is there that your best is indeed any good when viewed by another human being?

I swear that those lines in Canberra were crooked.

…It all just goes to show that when perfection can be seen quite innocently as imperfect – that nothing can ever be perfect in this world.

Which brings us to the moral of this tale.
“Your best is good enough…. Don’t ever try to be perfect (or you will live a life full of disappointment)”

Fairness and justice is pure fiction.

Every few weeks, I take up the role of ‘commissaire’ on a Sunday club race. My job is to ensure that the racing is fair and safe. And this tends to result in my hearing of complaints post-race about rider behaviour.

And I am supposed to keep scores and make a fair judgement…. Something that I am ill equipped to do.

As we go through life, we tend to collect ‘scores that we have to settle…’

Scoring tends to feature prominently in how we live our lives. There is a score to every type of game we play. Singles rate ‘SCORING’ fairly high on their weekend agenda. And even music has a score.

I have a slight leaning towards the belief of ‘Karma’ – although I know that the whole concept is flawed. Karma relies on the fact that someone is keeping score (specifically YOUR score)…

When in fact, the only one who keeps your score is yourself….and any other scores that involve you (as kept by others) – is only to make things interesting for them.

There is no grand register that keeps score of every human being – past present or future…Such a register would make Google’s huge search database seem like a drop of water in the oceans of the world. It is just not possible for someone even as powerful as GOD to administer such a register….especially if there is no reason for it.

Life happens by moments. As a racing cyclist in the heat of battle in a peloton, I have moments. And during those moments, I get to make decisions (and sometimes, the decision seems to be taken off my hands). Once those moments happen, it is never repeated. Keeping score only provide a memory of what happened. It has no weight to affect the scales of justice – which themselves are not real.

But in a world fixated by measuring things, keeping score is built into our DNA. Life in this world would lose one of its greatest dimensions if we did not keep score.

I do my business and personal financial accounts. It is the money scoring game. I remember all the times that Shirley forgot my birthday (and the times that I forgot hers). But no one else is keeping track of these the way I do. My scores are just part of the games I play and it does not need to be uploaded to a grand central register for settlement.

When you turn up for racing  on a Sunday, just remember that the commissaire is not there to settle your scores. The commissaires will not help you get even with another rider. That should never be their job, because they do not keep that style of scoring sheet.

Things happen in racing and none of it is anyone’s fault. Throw a bunch of racing cyclists together and you will see a multitude of styles and abilities…We have ex-pros, state and national champions together with no-name amateurs all fighting for a chance of a $50 prize. It does not matter how many medals you have on your dressing table. It makes no difference to the outcome of the race for everyone else…

By all means keep your own scores – but rest assured that they will evaporate into thin air the moment you leave this world.

Well, maybe not between first and second – but here is usually a small handful of outstanding performers, then followed by daylight before the rest turns up.

It was a good opportunity for me on Sunday to have a break from racing and just watch the action unfold. The A graders split up real early and there were 4 away. Peter Milostic, Eddie Salas, Andrew East and our own Chis B-Brown. Then there was daylight to the rest of the bunch. And it stayed this way to almost the end. Then in the final sprint, it was Eddie, daylight, Peter and more daylight…

In the last few days, we (The Rotary Club of Burwood) interviewed year 11 candidates for the National Youth Science Forum. We were looking for budding scientists. In each of the interview sessions, ONE candidate stood out. Then there was daylight followed by the rest of the applicants.

You will find similar examples in your own life.

Why is the world set up this way and what does that mean for the rest of us?

Last weekend started off with a wet Saturday and I had commissaire duties on Sunday.  No riding and a bit of spare time popped up. So, I decided to do a bit of work.

With my laptop and armed with my fast NBN connection, I logged into my Roofing Repair Website to begin a major re-build. (after I had watched Australia lose to Chile in the World Cup). Then on Sunday, after my duties at Eastern Creek, I shot a video, did the editing and uploaded it to You Tube for the HOME page.  By about midnight Sunday, my newly re-built website was up and running.

If you do a bit of research, you will see that my re-built website is a bit different. There is daylight between it and the rest of the roofing websites out there.

Whilst I have a great passion for riding and racing my bike, my other (among others) is to be on the leading edge of small business. I have a quiet confidence that there is daylight between how my business is structured for success and the other struggling small businesses out there…

Now, if I had been racing on Sunday, I would have been performing like the rest. (I may be able to start with Peter and Eddie on a break – but I would NOT last more than a couple of laps). There are often times when there is daylight between me and the racing bunch – that is at the back, rather than the front!. Clearly, I am not a star performer on the race track – but I enjoy my mediocrity there because that is just my ‘mucking around’ area of life.

When we interviewed the year 11 students, there were many star performers in other areas of study. Some had top grade academic results, while the others were gifted in the music and sports arenas. But we were looking for start scientists…

The lesson here is that we are all star performers in some areas in life. We just have to find it and develop it. I could never beat Eddie or Peter in a bike race – but they can’t build a small business like I do

Find your specialty and create daylight . The more daylight you can put between you and the rest, the more breathing space and options you will create for yourself. A dancer can open up and show off moves with a partner on an open ball room floor, but in a crowded disco, the dancers could only hope to wiggle their shoulders. He likes of Chris B-Brown, Peter Milostic and Andrew East limit their options when they wait for a bunch sprint But when they are away….anything is possible. My new website may be still ‘under construction’ – but I am not worried because there is still plenty of daylight to the rest out there.

Where does that leave our Eddie? There are people who are star performers in several classes. Eddie Salas is one of them. He can find daylight anywhere and anytime…He is gifted and he knows how to exploit it.

For most of us, music for the ears is just another enjoyment that life provides. There is something about music because it resonates with the receiver in our inner being. It has the power of transforming emotions like a light switch.

Music is made up of a combination of noise. And when music degenerates – it just becomes noise. That is when the music dies – when noise falls out of sequence.

So the secret is in the sequence. Get it right and noise becomes music.

Have you had days when everything seems to flow into one another and in the evening, you reflect on the ‘perfect’ day that you had?. Then the next day, you get out of bed on the wrong side and things go downhill from that point onwards.

In life, there are the music makers and the rest of us who are the music listeners. For a music listener, the end of a song introduces a void – and that is why we have the ‘non-stop music radio stations’ who are supposed to keep the music seamless. But for the music maker, there is always a song in the making. The music never dies for the music maker.

I usually go about my day listening to other people’s music – simply because it helps me in making my own. I think there are people called DJs who do this for a living….

The important thing is that if you are a life musician, the music in your life never dies. So, don’t spend your life just listening to “other people’s songs” – make your own.