ST train arrives in Victoria

Trev, Frank and Alex and I hit the hills in Victoria with the local boys for the regular Saturday Wheelers Ride. From a first-timer's perspective, it was a bit like a disciplined Cabin Ride, with a half hour solid double pace line up until a few k to the airport sprint followed by tempo.

Now to give you a bit of background on this sprint, Frank and Trev have been out in February 5 years running with some solid dudes, and so far the sprint win has been elusive. We scoped out the sprint yesterday on our way out of town.

Today, Frank hit the round-about/traffic circle behind one dude, but shortly after ramped up and it was the Speed Theory train leading with 4km to go. Frank punched out a furious 3 km at about 45kmh, with an attack coming up on the left but unable to match Frank's sustained effort. After he pulled off, Trev then ramped it up to about 50kmh and hammered that out for a kilo. As he pulled off attacks came from both sides, but even the local track dude couldn't pass Alex punching out the last few hundred meters, and that left me to hit it for the last 75 meters and take it for Speed Theory.

Following the sprint, the ride does a 10 minute recovery to bunch up, and then Trev had had enough and started off the tempo in the hills. The locals hit it hard in the rollers to teach these out of town upstarts how to ride, but Trev was laying down some punishing pulls. After we hit the highway on the way back, it was Frank who laid down some solid pulls and had everyone hurting (I think me the most).

Alex came back to form in the afternoon ride and crushed it on the hills as we toured the coast around Victoria as we racked up 160km, with the ritual sushi to end a good day's riding.