fireweed

For countless hours I pore over Michelin maps of central France to find the best base for my week’s stay before the official Cycleworks tour begins. For untold hours I surf the interweb examining French gîtes and chambres d’hôtes.

Clermont-Ferrand is the northern gateway to the Massif Central, the ruggedly mountainous and least touristy département of la belle France. Architecture here is medieval and some travel guides suggest life here borders on the primitive.

Villages dot the hills and valleys as they do everywhere in Europe. I am looking for a small town on the railway network with a boulangerie, a place or two to eat at night, and plenty of green-bordered roads snaking out of it on the Michelin; green borders indicate scenic routes.

I choose Langeac. Initial searches for accommodation are fruitless so I turn my attention to a bigger town 25 kms north—Brioude. I email the owner of Gîte Azerat requesting shelter. I get no reply and resume combing the web.

Whatever the search criteria, the same places present themselves again and again; only occasionally does an unseen place bob up. So it is with L’epilobe, or Fireweed.

Fireweed sounds like a noxious plant that might attract the attention of either quarantine officers, the narcotics branch, or park rangers sporting backpacks of lethal chemicals. In fact epilobium angustifolium has an attractive pinky purple flower: it’s a willowherb, the floral emblem of Yukon and the county flower of London, no less.

Madame Pillaud is the proprietor of L’epilobe. Her tariff is reasonable. She and I manage the contrat réservation in French: I can’t speak or write the language, but I read it well enough to understand what is required of me.

I surmise that Mme Pillaud is an older woman who speaks no English. The contrat réservation is composed using an ancient edition of Works, Madame has no credit facility or online money transfer, and deals only in cheques. It costs me an arm and a leg to remit a 90€ cheque by registered mail.

I hesitate to inform her that I don’t eat meat: vegetarianism is illegal in France, and probably viewed as satanic in the medieval massif. I disclose instead that I am coming to Langeac to see le Tour de France, to ride my bicycle, to write, and to read—nothing that would frighten the horses, surely?

moving on

On my desk are sticky notes and scraps of paper. They are full of distances and average speeds, but no dates and no destinations. They are the record of a couple of months of riding. For perhaps a week or a fortnight after writing them down I might remember them, but not now.

I ride but rarely write. I move out of Bendigo on Saturday 7 May. Packing is in earnest. I make car trips to Melbourne each weekend with boxes of stuff. It makes finding riding time hard. I have a good week, keeping above 200 kms, like the week including the Baw Baw ride and Mt Buller, my biggest week at 270+kms.

But there are stretches of a week to ten days when it's not possible to fit a ride in. Work presses and the packing has begun.

b2c3

It’s an age-old adage in cycling circles that big boys can’t climb hills. If you’re riding in France, you might substitute cols for hills; hence, big boys can’t climb cols.

One day years ago outside Boronia Station I’m approached by three strapping, swaggering lads. I brace myself for trouble. Imagine my relief when one of them looks me over and inquires affably, “Ow’s it goin’, big boy?”

I don’t see myself as a big boy but apparently others do. I’m a mere five foot ten in the old money, or 178 centimetres in the new currency. I’d be a rover in AFL if they hadn’t morphed into amorphous mid-fielders, or mids. I’m rover size but robust: big bones, sturdy legs, a more than adequate torso. And big boys can’t climb cols.

This thought is plastered to my forehead as I stand on the pedals and heave my trunk and branches up Straws Lane to Mount Macedon. I sit down again because when I do stand my back wheel spins on the wet road surface.

A sign at the bottom where the lane comes off the Woodend-Lancefield Road indicates a 10 per cent gradient for two kilometres and it’s right on the mark, with some eight percent sections compensated by some at 12. Any way you dice it, it’s a grunt.

Straws Lane turns left into the Mount Macedon Road proper and another sign warns of more 10 per cent climbing. This one isn’t accurate: the grade never gets above seven. But by now I’m in the cloud and it’s cool and moist. I eschew the chance to punish myself for an extra four kilometres at the turn-off to the memorial cairn. I’m already 908 metres above sea level and I have a train to catch.

I descend the front of the mountain under brakes but still crack 79kph. I pedal through the leafy Macedon township to the old Calder Highway, now Black Forest Drive, and climb in dribs and drabs up to Woodend. Will I wait here for the train or risk beating it to Kyneton where I started my ride into a stiff southerly?

With a less stiff southerly behind me I power out of town, zigging left along the Carlsruhe Central Road and zagging north onto the Kyneton-Trentham Road. I’ll catch the 11:38 easily.

The station mistress does nice things to my libido, a most unusual characteristic for a railway employee. I alight at 12:22 and I’m home at 12:25 with 66.11kms under the belt at 24.5kph.

Big boys can climb hills; they just can’t do it quickly.

gearing down

Riding up Buller something other than my legs starts to grate, to grind, to click, to clack. Not good sounds from my bottom bracket. I don’t need my triple, my 30-tooth, but I couldn’t use it anyway. It skates big time. Something has to be done before France—replace the drive-train, run the new one in, get used to the feel, the practice of it. Something has to be done now.

I do a little web search. Both the legendary Sheldon Brown and Bike Noob have something to say on alternatives to triples. Sheldon likes my dying Shimano Dura Ace triple but says it has serious shortcomings. The bolt holes are unique and difficult, which I discovered when making a middle ring changeover two months ago.

Bike Noob introduces the SRAM Apex—50 x 34 at the front and 11 to 32 at the back. Packs as much grunt as a triple and has more useable gears, like all 20, compared to the triple’s 27 possibilities but only 16 useful gears. Mick can do the job for $770 plus labour.

I drop the bike in Saturday arvo after the Baw Baw Challenge ride. Mick’s busy fitting a customer; hands me the box of components to inspect: brakes, callipers and shifters, rear set of sprockets, and ... I save the magic chainrings till last. And read the unmagic figures 53-39.

Mick says they often get it wrong. He’ll call them first thing Monday and hope he can get the part for the job for me by Tuesday afternoon when I come down to Croydon. 

baw baw challenge

Mick sends an email to the French travellers. He has a complimentary ticket for the Baw Baw Challenge, a 120km run out of Warragul on Saturday 9 April. I’m straddling the bike at the starting area, but only because the ride doesn't ascend Mt Baw Baw. The title refers to the Shire of. 

We’re away on time, me in the second group of twenty. Up and over the brick arch spanning the station and rail lines, a right and out to Darnum on flat roads. Little surges and knots and the pace settles and riders find groups that suit them.

I haven’t ridden group for so long. About seven kms out, I chase a small group and hang on. No point doing it all alone at the start. Save some energy in the bunch. We find a rhythm on the back road to Trafalgar where we hand a left and head north into the Great Divide.

The road undulates its way to Willow Grove, the ascents short and straightforward. Up to Hill End they get longer, steeper, until two long grunty drags split the groups up toward Fumina South. Over the top we’re into rain forest.

From here to Noojee there are two climbs, the second brutal, but a bag-piper pipes each rider up and over the top. Two rapid descents follow, the second hurtling me down the mountain at 79kph.

A rock-steady climb of five per cent follows on a car-free back road that winds up to Neerim. The legs are seriously wounded now and I’ve ridden on my own for 30 kms since the Hill End refreshment stop, buffeted by a north-westerly bringing in an afternoon weather change.

A final refreshment stop at Neerim Junction. I see fewer riders. Few pull in for cake, lollies, water. I mount up for the undulations back to Warragul, mostly downhill with a tailwind, but with a sad final insult: five kilometres into the breeze to come home.

The organisers say it's a 119 km course. I have it at 124.66kms, which I cover at an average of 26kph and four hours and 48 minutes in the saddle. We climb 1670 metres over the journey and the top gradient is 15 per cent.

It’s a beautiful, tough but fair ride through pasture, woodlands, forested foothills and the rain forest at the top of the range.

I drive back to the city, direct to Mick’s shop in Croydon. This is my last ride on a creaky Dura Ace system. Age seems to be getting the better of it. The SRAM Apex is to have a go.    

buller

I have come to Mansfield to ride Buller. Mount Buller, that is. The thing is 1600 metres tall and Mansfield is a tad over 300 above sea level. To the top and back is 100kms exact.

From Mansfield the road makes a bee-line out of town. It looks flat but rises slowly and steadily. Two shallow climbs take you over the Glenroy Hills. Now you can see Buller properly and start wondering how the fuck you summon the strength and energy to pedal it.

The road no longer pretends to be flat and rises about 250 metres in total between the start of the ride and Mirimbah at the real start of the climb. This is where cars pay their dues to be allowed onto the mountain. In winter and at weekends. But not today and not bicycles.

It’s Monday morning and the ‘traffic’ has all but disappeared since I left Mansfield at 8:22. It’s close to 10 and the sun is bathing the place in autumnal glory when I pouch the python after a piss and point my nose at the sky. The sign says 15 kms to the top.

The gradient is a pretty much unrelenting six to eight per cent. A flat of maybe 500 metres is the only relief all the way up. The final two kilometres are all double figure grades with a last gasp pitch of 12 per cent. It’s thigh-puncturing stuff.

The descent is fabulous, especially on a non-holiday Monday morning with no traffic in front holding you up, and none harrying you from behind. No rocky rubble litters the road and the surface is mostly smooth.

Finally back on something resembling a flat road, my legs are raw sausage. I determine to have a crack at the road up Battery Hill to Benbullen where my Mansfield hosts live. But with my triple chainring out of commission--the 30-cog ring skates on the chain--there is no hope for me. I dismount before losing momentum and falling off.

The steep section is no more than 150 metres. The cycle computer tells me I’m wheeling the Cervélo up a 24 per cent slope. It’s hard enough walking it in the bike shoes.

So there you go; there I go. Buller is behind me. I’d like to do it again, maybe in early June, when it’s cold, maybe even a bit of snow. But no wind or rain, please. 

up in smoke

My man Carey at Gembrook writes to ask if I’m a puff of smoke. I write like a Dervish for a couple of months, then nothing. Did I fall off the bike, he asks. No, I fell off the wagon.

It all begins on what turns out to be my last day at the gym. I pick up my not-too-heavy barbell and am about to make my way onto the floor for pump class but realise that the rick I felt in my back is not to be trifled with. I don’t risk the rick, but by night I’m a wreck anyway.

My back incapacitates me for weeks. I stop going to the gym. I stop riding. I cease writing about riding and write about my back. It doesn’t respond to the usual remedies; my recovery takes time. My twin concerns are when can I ride and can I lift everything that needs lifting when I move house?

Moving house becomes the issue. It consumes all energy, all effort, all time. I allow five weeks but it hardly seems enough time to organise a household of belongings, to pack it, to stack it, to load it, to drive it 200kms, to unload it, and to clean up after it. And to go to work three days a week and present some semblance of an interested employee.

In fact I do manage some sporadic rides, and some spasmodic writing, But I don’t edit and I don’t post. My one-man business sparks up and I’m training groups of people in Sydney and around country Victoria. I desperately need the money to fund the trip to France I’m no longer training for.

2011 is all about climbing real and metaphorical mountains. Moving house; moving city; moving building and office at work; training; renovating my house; re-educating myself for a job when my current job ends at the end of the year; and 28 days in France riding up the Alps and the Pyrénées smack in the middle of it all.