Yarra Boulevard Times

hmmmmm....never timed myself through there. I'm way too chicken to go fast down the hills, so that would KILL my time :p

I usually take about 13 minutes per "half-loop" (Chandler Hwy intersection to Studley Park golf club). This is on a light road bike with no baggage BTW, not usual commuter duty. I've been commuting for about 3 years now.

Somehow, though, despite getting less fit and heavier over the past year, I've occasionally broken into the 12:30's ... 😕 don't know how that works! Maybe it was cause I did some leg strength training in the gym during that time.

I wouldn't really be worried about comparing your times with other peoples' -- a better, more motivating thing to do, is to keep a record of the times you take, and see how they improve as the months go by 🙂

rek said:

I wouldn't really be worried about comparing your times with other peoples' -- a better, more motivating thing to do, is to keep a record of the times you take, and see how they improve as the months go by 🙂

Oh spot on - it isn't as if I am about to start 'racing' any time soon. I'm slow and lacking in any long term speed (cruising at 25km/h while commuting is about it).

However i'm just curious about a benchmark for this sort of thing. Because I fly past people on my commute, however getting some 'active' cyclers benchmark times, i'd love to see just how I fair up.

parawolf said:

Oh spot on - it isn't as if I am about to start 'racing' any time soon. I'm slow and lacking in any long term speed (cruising at 25km/h while commuting is about it).

However i'm just curious about a benchmark for this sort of thing. Because I fly past people on my commute, however getting some 'active' cyclers benchmark times, i'd love to see just how I fair up.

What you need is www.cycle2max.com. Exactly what you are looking for to see how you stack up. It may not have the piece of climb on it, you could enter it yourself provided you have the necessary data, or you could take your flatbar out to a well-travelled climb one Saturday and see.

parawolf said:

I'm looking for something more interesting to bring into my exercise schedule and I am fairly close to the infamous Yarra Boulevard in Kew (suburb of Melbourne).

I am just a commuter at this moment, and average about 150km a week slowly pushing up to 200km a week, with most of the time carrying a 5 - 7 kg bag on my back which contains laptop, clothes, etc for my days work. My bike is a flat bar road bike (Jamis Coda Comp), so not as fast as a drop bar road bike, but good enough for me at the moment.

Now i'm also a fairly new rider, starting in October 2005, and riding every day from November to now. So i'm getting kilometres into my legs at a reasonable rate. I scored a Cateye Enduro 8 for Christmas and its great at showing me what stats it can (unfortunately no cadence or 'power' calculations).

So anyway, part of commuting was losing some weight, and getting some form of general fitness under my belt. I'm 6'2, and now just under 85kg (down some 6kg since October 2005). So i've reached my goal weight from when I started, it really didn't take much time at all, but i'm hoping this will improve continually, hopefully I will get to about 83kg and maintain that just by commuting.

What i'm looking for is some kind of benchmark for reasonable times for either a lap, or a one way pass of the Yarra Boulevard - preferably starting at Chandler Hwy end. Or if you have stats of one section to another that would be great too. I'd like to get feedback in the times it has taken you from what starting point, to what finishing/turn around point and what sort of level fitness are you at? If you could also include overall distances and avg speeds that would be fantastic.

I try and to the "lap" (chandler Hwy to golf club and back ) in under just under 30 mins.
I am just recreational cyclist at present doing around 150 to 200 km per week.
Hope this helps

jake10-1 said:

I try and to the "lap" (chandler Hwy to golf club and back ) in under just under 30 mins.

I hope that includes the last climb right up to Walmer St. 🙂

At Hawthorn CC we had a TT there last year running from the big orange line near the corner of Walmer and the Boulevard, to the tiny roundabout near the freeway overpass and back. The fastest time was around 16 something, with the average around 18-19 mins (to go 19 minutes you have to average about 35k/h [i think]). Unfortunately, the results have been taken off the Hawthorn website.

Jono

531Aussie said:

I hope that includes the last climb right up to Walmer St. 🙂

Yep it does

You can get yourself timed on March 12th.

bv.com.auinform.phpOpen ↗

You can have yourself timed on March 12th!

[font=Times New Roman][font=Arial][/font]bv.com.auinform.phpOpen ↗[/font]

MattyP said:

You can have yourself timed on March 12th!

[font=Times New Roman][font=Arial][/font]bv.com.auinform.phpOpen ↗[/font]

Yeah unfortunately i'm going to be interstate for this date 🙁 soo not happy about it.

MattyP said:

You can get yourself timed on March 12th.

bv.com.auinform.phpOpen ↗

I rode past the "road closure" sign on Studley Park Road this morning (city-bound) and it has the wrong date! Sent an email to BV but no reply as yet.

roshea said:

I rode past the "road closure" sign on Studley Park Road this morning (city-bound) and it has the wrong date! Sent an email to BV but no reply as yet.

My mistake - I misread the *correct* date on the sign - Sunday 12 March 06 - I saw the 06 and not the 12! Must have been going too fast!

MattyP said:

You can get yourself timed on March 12th.
bv.com.auinform.phpOpen ↗

there you go, ROO-MAN....12th of March 🙂

MattyP said:

You can get yourself timed on March 12th.

Nifty. Maybe I'll head down there before work...