Melbourne Day 3 - Maribyrnong

On day 3 we skated out to the delightfully named suburb of Maribyrnong. This was a skate I hadn't done before and I think it was one of my favorites because of the different scenery that we passed on the way. Initially we skated through Melbourne centre, through the Southern Cross railway station and around the Etihad stadium. The stadium is near the Docklands part of Melbourne which is home to many public works of sculpural art

These are just positioned with no explanation, leaving the interpretation to the mind of the onlooker. This is not necessarily a good thing

We continued through Docklands and onwards

Steve sternly dealt with a crisis of confidence when we suddenly realised that the pubs were open in town

whilst Monte struggled to find the true spirit of Easter

Soon we were out amongst the old industrial waterways with their iron-girdered bridges - Melbourne often makes me think of Manchester and apart from the blue skies this could be Salford Quays

The headwind was picking up at this point so we fell into a paceline to preserve some energy

Before we knew it we were at our turnaround point, happy that headwinds would soon become tailwinds as we headed back to the distant city.

We dropped a couple of tired people off on the tram to take the easy way home so the pace on the skate back was fast - I was struggling a bit to hang on. We passed Flemington race course (on the other side of the river) and I swear I heard commentary - 'and the englishman at the back is flagging'

Once the red mist had cleared I realised that we were back in Docklands

and only a short skate along South Bank until we were back at the apartments

Melbourne Day 2 - Upper Fern Tree Gulley

Day 2 was the infamous 'challenge skate' from Upper Fern Tree Gulley to the city (approx 55km). This is a great skate that really allows you to stretch your legs, with a few nasty hills to keep you warm.

No pictures from the early parts of the skate along smooth footpaths through housing estates, past shopping and the local tip. But as you approach the lunch stop at Jells Park you meet 2km of this

Every trip we hope it's been sealed but it never happens.

Soon after you enter Jells Park
Monte & his mum met us there for an excellent lunch, although I was a bit disappointed that we didn't bring Fatty down with us so that she could play in the local park
After lunch we climbed steadily & sweatily out of the park
and after negotiating a few housing estates we were back on beautiful smooth bikeways
It was Easter Sunday so Monte met us further along with an Easter bunny huntThe chocolate kept us going as we wound our way through the outskirts of Melbourne

and before we knew it we were on the banks of the mighty YarraFrom here it's a quick 6km to the apartments by some extremely footsore people!

Melbourne Day 1 - Bay Skate

The first skate of the tour was the Bay skate (35km) - from Mordialloc to the city via St Kilda. This is a very popular roadie route as well and someone has spotted an excellent business opportunity with the Tour De Cafe - one of the only cafes I've seen that sell powerbars & energy gels along with the usual fareWe stuck to the bike path next to the road for most of the trip along the bay, providing great amusement to the large number of roadies that passed us, but sometimes we could drop down to the footpaths next to the bay
The weather was beautful again, with clear blue skies and virtually no wind. The bay was like a millpond so fortunately we didn't need our lifesaver

Before we knew it we were at St Kilda
After a solid lunch at a pub in St Kilda (unfortunately I didn't have a wide angle lens so couldn't get a picture of Monte's huge burger) we carried on along the bay before turning inland and heading back to the apartments.

That day was Liz's birthday so after a trip to the famous Espy and pizza by the bay at sunset we celebrated with beer and cupcakes in the penthouse suite

Thanks to Pedro for the cakes and to everyone for the beer & hospitality!

Melbourne Skate - the preskates

Thought it was time that I talked about the Melbourne skate trip. It's been a month since we were down there and it's causing a bit of a mental block - I can't write about other things because I still need to put the Melbourne review up. So here we go.

Skate Melbourne is a bi-yearly skate trip put on by Planet Inline. This year around 15 skaters from Brisbane turned up to tour around Melbourne and it's suburbs. The paths are reasonably well known but to make sure the trips run smoothly someone needs to pre-skate each tour to make sure that no changes have been made. I was one of the marshalls / tour leaders for the trip which meant that I got to go down earlier and get some extra skating in.

I was posted out to WA for a few days with work just before the trip so I landed in Brisbane at 7pm on Wednesday evening and flew down to Melbourne on a 6am flight on Thursday morning. So I arrived in Victoria tired stiff and sick of sitting on planes. After some excellent coffee and a decent breakfast two of us pre-skated the Bay skate from Mordialloc to St Kilda and then on to the city (approx 35km). No pictures from this skate as my camera was still charging but the beautiful weather and fresh sea air did wonders in recharging my batteries.

The next day we pre-skated the Mitcham tour - from Mitcham to the city (approx 45km). This skate was a little longer and trickier than the Bay skate and had us both working hard by the end - maybe next time we should stop for something to eat?

Essence of cuteness

Liz's sister and her partner have just got a new puppy. Ollie is a Cavalier King Charles / Cocker spaniel cross and despite only being a few weeks old has obviously been studying hard at cute school I'm a sucker for dogs anyway and when I was young we had a Cavalier King Charles called Toby so when they wanted someone to puppysit on Friday we put our paws up straight away.He's in his chewing mode at the minute so takes any opportunity to have a gnaw at carpets, toys, bags, chromed table legs, sofas, trousers, t-shirts and everything contained therein.
He even took a fancy to the camera, which fortunately is waterproof & shockproof. It was bought to be 'Liz proof' so it shakes off puppys with disdain.

Hindsight

OK so perhaps I should have listened to myself on Friday evening. I've been stiff & sore ever since the run and today I was struggling to walk and had to miss out on a ride. I still want to get back into running, but I'll ease myself back in gradually...

Run along Sonny

The nights are drawing in in Brisbane now - we're fairly close to the equator so the sunset shifts from around 7.30pm at mid-summer to 5ish at mid-winter. Work is also pretty hectic at the minute so by the time I get home it's hard to drag myself out to do anything and I'm starting to feel my body complaining about the lack of exercise. Fortunately Brisbane winters are perfect for running. I used to say that running was for people who were too poor to ride bikes & too uncoordinated to skate, but last year we had a corporate entry in the City To Surf charity run in Sydney (I'll talk about that in a later blog) and as part of the training for that I learned to enjoy running.

It's a wierd pursuit though. It delivers a pretty good exercise bang for your buck but it takes a toll on your body, especially if you have fitness from other sports. If you have cardio fitness from something like riding or skating then you're likely to be expecting to reach the same feelings of exhaustion, but your joints will give out long before your lungs. You should always break your body in gently with a fast walk, slowly adding short running sections and extending the distance by no more than 10% a week.

Naturally if you're a bloke you know all this but you will still go out and try to run the way you used to one, two or many years ago. Despite not running since an early morning jog through Hong Kong one November morning last year I tried to run my old 'short' 5km training run tonight. I probably made it just over half way through before listening to my shins & knees and walking home. Still it was a beautiful night to be out - lovely clear star-studded skies, a slightly cool bite to the air to keep you comfortable and that smug & slightly illicit feeling of quietly passing past all those TV-illuminated houses.

If I can survive the pain I'll go through tomorrow (and of course I'll do it in my traditionally stoic manner with hardly a complaint) then I'd like to continue to run, once a week or so. You seem to be able to get a couple of hours worth of thinking into a 40 minute run / walk, although to be fair most of that thinking revolves around 'ouch my knees, oooh my ankles, blimey my legs hurt'. Last year I also did some trail running and although that requires another level of fitness again it's also a lot more fun so I might try to work towards that. Although there are obvious drawbacks as well...(just don't show this to anyone)