Club Notes / This week’s Spins
Well that’s the first week of the New Year down! And an eventful one it turned out to be…..
The usual club turbo sessions were had on Tuesday and Thursday evening and the Wednesday night spin was deferred to Thursday evening due to the bad weather where they had a spin to Moneygall and back.
Saturday morning there was a good turnout for the race training group and the lads got a nice fresh morning for what was a great workout covering over 100km on some nice rolling roads. It was a good tough session to start getting rid of the Christmas excesses. Unfortunately, Saturdays training was a little too focused, and there was a man unknowingly left behind with a puncture near the end of the course. There was just some wires crossed and at a junction the group headed off as soon as the lads off the back came into sight instead of waiting till everyone regrouped and the shouts about the puncture weren’t heard. Then the lads who had headed off in front thought he had turned home early as he had mentioned he might do this earlier, but this is not the way we do things in the club so apologies go out to Liam for leaving him alone in the cold to fend for himself! In future if the group splits they regroup in full at any junction before continuing on! No one gets left on their own without agreement…
Sunday morning we had a great turnout for the weekly spin on what was a cold morning. There were 2 groups formed at the start and the leisure group decided to just head to Roscrea and back and stopped for a very enjoyable coffee at the Obama Plaza. The seniors decided to take on the planned route having been fooled into a false sense of security with evreyone used to the so far very mild winter and all the roads leading to Nenagh having thawed well. Everything seemed like it was going to be a fab morning for a cycle with the sun shining down… Oh did they get a surprise!! Everyone was going very well and there was a great pace set going up the climb from Dolla to Ormond Stile and everything seemed fine on the road. Once the hill was crested and when everyone regrouped at the top, the group started to push on down the other side towards Templederry but right when the speeds were at their highest, the lads came around a bend and met what was a complete skating rink on the road and once the first person went down, several others followed suit like dominos while trying to shed the speed and not run over them. Thankfully no one was seriously injured as everyone just slid along the ice but at that point they were in no man’s land and everyone decided that it was probably best to just keep going across to the Thurles road rather than turning around and facing the steep descent to Dolla. If it wasn’t so dangerous it would have been comical watching the lads all walking along pushing their bikes! We even had Roger try his hand at human bowling… splitting the group while coasting down the road shouting “OUTTA THE WAY!!!” but we have to give him credit for holding the bike upright as he headed to the ditch on the far side of the road to bring it to a stop and giving everyone a good laugh! The North Tipp Wheelers turned into the North Tipp Walkers for about 3km until they managed to make their way to the Thurles road! From there the group made their way home to Nenagh and called time on the spin there.
It did teach everyone a valuable lesson on not taking chances even after checking some roads as there’s always a chance on a morning like that, especially up in the hills, that there are no guarantees as to the state of the roads and we should have called it in the carpark to stick to the main roads… Lesson learned! We hope everyones bruises heal quickly, fair play to you all for turning out and hopefully the weather will be kinder next weekend!
Mizen to Malin 2016
On Monday night last we had a meeting on our proposed Mizen to Malin cycle for later this year in August over 4 days from Thursday 4th to Sunday 7th and returning home by bus on the Monday morning, 8th.
The route is this:
Bike Fitting
Club Open Nights
Next week’s Club Training spins are as follows:
Tuesday: Club Turbo training session in Streame from 7pm -8.30pm. This will be a structured training session and please contact Liam on 087 6322618 for more details.
Wednesday: Club night spin leaving from Moynans at 7pm. Avg speed between 25/27kph.
Thursday: Club Turbo training session in Streame from 7pm -8.30pm. This will be a structured training session and we encourage members to give it a try.
Saturday:
A few club members take part in an intermediate cycle 40/50km in distance, averaging 25kph on a Saturday morning leaving Woodies at 7.30am. Anyone who wants to is very welcome to join in on this spin. You can contact William on 086 2447888 for more details.
Main club spin leaving from Woodies car park at 9am. Since wind is forecast as NNE, this week’s route is: Woodies – Borrisokane – Ballingary – Shinrone – Roscrea – Moneygall(Coffee stop 56km if the hardcore faction can be convinced 🙂 ) – Nenagh 75km – Additional loop out Thurles road to Ballinamona cross -Toomevara – Nenagh to make 101km.
Sunday: Normal 9am spin from Moynans. Wind direction forecast is SSE so this week the route is: Moynans – Roscrea – Templemore – Borrisoleigh – Nenagh 83km. A coffee can be had in Templemore (50km) if the group so wishes on the morning.
Have a great week everyone 🙂