Spring Cycle
The Spring Cycle is a yearly event, it's part of the Sydney Rides Festival (9th October - 16th October) which comes to a conclusion today.
Presented by Bicycle NSW, the NSW Government and City of Sydney, there are 2 rides, the City Ride (16km) and Classic Ride (55km). Learning about the ride only a couple of weeks ago, I decided it was time to sign up and give the City Ride a go. It was also the perfect event to try out my new bike.
Starting from North Sydney, over the Harbour Bridge, on the overpass above Circular Quay, down to the Royal Botanic Gardens. The sun was casting an early morning glow over the Opera House and Harbour Bridge, the weather couldn't be any better.
From there you ride back up on the overpass towards the bridge, down to Pyrmont, over the Anzac Bridge, to Five Dock, through to North Strathfield, Rhodes, over the bridge to Ermington, down into Newington and finishing in Sydney Olympic Park.
This is the first significant ride i've done with such variety in locations, i'm used to keeping to one area and just doing laps. It was actually over quite quickly, it's hard to get into the mindset that when riding a bike you cover a lot of ground in a short amount of time.
Now that i've done this ride though, I now have a good sense of the roads, distances and time to compare to future rides.
The areas in which I rode I had never experienced before, so it was great to explore Sydney by bike. I've already gotten ideas for doing future rides, especially around Homebush. It's pretty convenient living next to Central Station too, as I can get to and from many locations.
My new bike also performed really well, getting up hills with ease and no issues whatsoever. All the riders were fairly spread apart so I could go as fast as I wanted.
At the top of the post is my actual ride data, exported from RunKeeper and imported into Google Maps using their API.
Completing the ride in just over 2 hours from 6:30 to 8:30am, it was a great 51km, thanks to Bicycle NSW for hosting it.
Photo by Steveathon on Flickr.