 What are you doing? It's just watching you pump up the bike tire. It's really uncoordinated. Come on, get it down, that's it. Ah! So welcome to what I'm calling a monster cycling vlog and this will be the last video I do on this channel for the next couple of weeks and I'll explain why shortly, but in this video what I'm gonna do with you is share my first experiences racing the Giant TCR also why I took the Giant TCR over the Specialized Lay Sprint or the Chapter 2 rare, right? My wife also competed in her first half Iron Man or I'm not sure if I should be saying half Iron Lady because she is the lady. Either way, she's gonna share her experiences with us and a very important one, we both had races on the same day, only one set of MV6.7 Race Wheels. So who got to take those home? And I'm also gonna share lastly some road racing tips in my first road race that I've done since May 2016 which was the Queensland State Champs in Kingaroy. As you saw at the start of this video as well, just to quickly mention my FTP numbers at the start of this vlog series, two weeks in I did a Zwift FTP test, I scored 338 and I did another one this morning, nine weeks in, so that's a seven week timeline and I scored 351. Also, my weight was about 81 kilos in week two and now it's about 77, so things are on the right track and if you wanna know how I do things, I've got a free guide which I'll link to below. Now, before we get into the meat of this video, I just wanted to thank everyone for their well wishes. We got caught in some pretty serious bushfires in our local area. We were evacuated from our property for over 48 hours. In fact, after I published that video on Wednesday shortly afterwards, we were informed that we could come home and the first thing that I needed to check on was. The question is, are the most important things in the home, excuse the best, we left in a hurry. Yes, there's one, there's two and the other one's in the shop. How's it all? But in all seriousness, we returned from the local area and the fact that so many residential and commercial properties had been saved from nearby fires, I take my hat off to the Queensland Emergency Services Department. You've done a phenomenal job. You've put your lives at risk so you could save so many people's homes in a local area. So thank you very much. The other quick thing that I wanted to mention before we move into the meat of this video is this will be the last video I publish on the channel. For the next two weeks, reason being the personal life behind the scenes has gotten really hectic over the last few weeks. We're still trying to buy this house. It's turned into a massive ordeal. So there's that. I'm selling a business or we might have just sold it and we're gonna have to go through a massive handover process. So that's gonna take a lot of time and just being out for 48 hours with these evacuations I'm way behind and the YouTube content as much as I love it, it's very time consuming and I need to focus on the personal life just for the time being. But I'll be back in two weeks and the one thing I'm debating when I come back is do I keep this vlog series alive? It was always a bit of a test. I was always running it for 10 weeks. I'm still new to YouTube. I'm still learning things. I think it's been successful. I think people like it, but the challenge that I face with it, there's no financial benefit that I get from investing my time into it outside of pure enjoyment and fun, which is great. But I need to focus my time and energy into areas. I'm setting up other businesses as we speak. So I'm debating on whether I keep the weekly vlog series alive. What I thought I would do is run a bit of a test. I know some people out there enjoying the series. I've got a Patreon account. I've sort of set some things up over there. If you wanna keep the vlog series alive, I'm gonna see if we can get some patrons on board. We'll give you first access to the vlog and I'll keep that series running if we can hit a certain target. I'll link to that below. And look, I know for many you're gonna be like, man, YouTube's free, I'll go watch somebody else. I get that. I'm just speaking to the people that wanna see the vlog series stay alive. So links below, let's get into this video The most important part where we need to start is my wife and I both had races. So who would take home the Envy 6.7 race wheels for Sunday? Do you want to take your glasses off so we can tell you what? Oh, I've been running, no. How's your run going? Really good. Okay. The first question a lot of people ask me, who got the wheels? Ah! I got the Envy wheel. Yeah. But I wasn't forceful about it, was I? No, no. I was happy with these wheels because it was a windy day actually and these did all right. You prefer them actually? I like them, I've been riding on them since and they're good. It's been, it has been windy here though lately. So it's good because the wind doesn't catch it. So now we've got that out of the way. Let's go to Friday evening where Alice was registering for her half and then the following day, the Saturday, where the logistics started in preparation for Sunday. You took me, 17 days to shake you We range from mind to reaction All right. Daddy and the two little girls, we're packing the car. We're going to Kingaroy and Mummy is over here. What are you doing? Still a little ride, swim, never run. Tomorrow? You're prepared? What happened earlier this week? I've been sick. I had the flu. Yeah. So it's going to be fun tomorrow. What's going to be the hardest part? Swim or is it last time? Oh, the swim probably still, I'd say. What's going on down there? I'm just... For sure. All right. We wish you all the best. Thank you. Road trip to Kingaroy, let's go. So we've just arrived in Kingaroy. The road race is tomorrow and we're staying in what is a deluxe cabin. It's very deluxe. What do you reckon girls? Morning. Top bunks are elevated to be beds. Dangerous and not recommended for children under the age of 12. What do you reckon Robs? Quick side. I'm sleeping up there and I'm six, not 12. Daddy is separated from the girls. I've got this lovely bedroom in here. Look at this. It's very, very deluxe. All right, what are we doing tonight girls? Going to the pub, yeah. The pub. So as you could see, I had the kids with me. Reason being Alice had registered for the half well and truly before I decided that I wanted to do the state champs and as a result of that, in order to get to the state champs, I had to go to the Kingaroy community Facebook page and find some, or find a babysitter for my kids. And I managed to find a family on a farm about 20 minutes out of Kingaroy to look after my kids on the Sunday. But to ensure they weren't axe murderers, we went out on the Saturday beforehand, said hello, made sure everything was all kosher. So on Sunday, everyone would feel comfortable. It was a very logistical situation, but it turned out to be super fun for the kids, which was really great to see. And before we get into that road race in Kingaroy on Sunday, let's hear from Alice how she went in her first ever half iron man slash lady. I went well. I was aiming for, I'd been sick the week before. So I was aiming for a sub 545 and I did 525. So that was pretty good. First swim that I didn't have a panic attack in open water, which was great. Faster, 90 Ks. I did PBs in all three, so that was good. And I did a faster half marathon to finish it off than I did just doing the marathon alone in May. So it was pretty epic. So the race starts being delayed by maybe an hour and I'm just hanging by Ian's car, being a gangster. Looking like a cool dude. All right, so here we are. It is Sunday, the eighth of September and this is the Queensland State road champs. 120 kilometers or four laps across a lumpy and what became a windy course. On the screen from left to right, you can see time of day, distance, speed, heart rate, gradient and the course. Unfortunately, no power today due to no power meter on the giant at this stage. The numbers on the rider's backs you can see masters one in white and masters two in green. I am masters two, which is 35 to 39 age bracket. I'm currently 38 myself. And masters one is 30 to 34 years of age. So for me, in this road race, I need to be realistic. It's my first road race since May, 2016. I've been training for less than two months, coming from a pretty low base and my original target event was 84 kilometers. This is 120. So will I have the legs for roughly 3.5 hours? I highly doubt it. So with this in mind, my friends, this race for me is what I call match practice. Getting back into the swing of racing and seeing where I am at. Now, if match practice is your goal, it doesn't mean you throw the race podium out the window. If I can hang on here, I'll be going for it 100%. But match practice does change the way. I look at how I will ride this race. I wanna push myself, I wanna get race fit using this as a stepping stone. However, the first thing I did was call my mate Ian and ask, how can I help you? Ian is always fit and firing and he was keen to have a crack today. So we had a few plans on how I could be used, including becoming well acquainted with the gutter in crosswind conditions. You'll see here, we're now in the first dirt section of the race on lap one. Now I'd turn the GoPro on after we'd gone up a fair old incline and the heat was on for a good few minutes before I managed to push the on button. Now during this period of the race, I lost Ian. I didn't think he would have been dropped and as it turns out, it was his chain that dropped, leaving him having to play catch up on what became the main bunch for the rest of the race. Now I had no idea at the time what had happened to Ian. All I knew that he wasn't there and I needed to reset. Now as we have here, what is essentially a breakaway which ended up becoming the race? The first thing you wanna do though when you've got a breakaway is for everyone to do some work together. It's fair and it makes everyone's life easier. But as you're gonna see during this section, really between where the break happened and the start of lap two, many riders simply don't wanna do any work. There's probably about three or four of us doing the majority of the work. I yell a few words of encouragement from time to time, even indicating to some of the riders to back off their turn so we can all get involved. While there are some moments where it looked to be working, then all of a sudden it would turn to shot again. When this happened, I'd indicate some verbal frustration. And when you do so, you've gotta lead by example and roll again to the front. But my efforts were appearing to be worthless and I became frustrated. Now quickly, you can see a chapter two raree there, a limited edition looks great in the group and there's also an LA Sprint floating around somewhere. So to answer a question from the audience, why take the giant TCR over the chapter two raree and the LA Sprint to other bikes that I have at home? With the chapter two raree and I'll link to a full review on that bike below. For me, it's mainly because I have a SRAM one by drivetrain on my chapter two raree, which is awesome for criterias but for this terrain, not so good. I also find there is some slight flex in the front end of the frame when punching it out of the saddle on a steep climb. Nothing alarming and on the positive side, it does create a super comfortable ride for an aero beast of a bike, but this is a slight weakness that does come into consideration for road races with steep, punchy climbs. With the specialized LA Sprint, it is a little on the heavy side and while it's stiff, I do find it a little unforgiving on the lumpy and coarse terrain, adding further fatigue into the body in comparison to say a stiff carbon frame like the TCR that absorbs the roads better. Lastly, I do feel that agility wise, a lightweight carbon frame gives you a lot more than other frame materials in the market. So ultimately, I wasn't there to help any of these riders and if I wasn't gonna get any cooperation, I decided in lap two to join any moves that I saw. So we're in lap two here and I've seen my South African mate who's not afraid to get involved. He's in masters one, go off the front and he was one of the riders working in lap one. So I'm like, there goes a rider that's gonna do some work. I'm gonna go with him. Five minutes later though, we're joined by somebody else and then a few minutes following the bunch quarters. So perhaps a 10 minute stint off the front that was ultimately unsuccessful. Shortly after we're approaching the dirt section for a second time and I see another masters two rider lift the pressure and go off the front. Now I didn't see this rider getting involved in lap one but he is masters two, so I decided to join. And I must say he's got some serious pressure on the cranks here. I really do wish I had my power numbers because I reckon we would have been punching out I would have been punching out a good 500 watts plus in this section. And you'll see my heart rate approaching max which is around about 182 beats these days. You'll also see that I'm sitting to the right of the rear wheel of this rider in front of me. Why is that? The wind was blowing from left to right here. So in this position, I'm currently in I am best protected from the wind. Now I would happily get involved here doing some turns up this dirt climb but he's got some serious pressure on the crank and he's keen to do the work so I'm just sitting in trying to hang on. Now I wish I had a rear GoPro here so you could see the gap opening but here is a shot you can see as the gap opens in this section. One major thing you wanna do in these circumstances is once an effort has been made up the hill or an incline, you need to drive it over the top of the crest. So as we get to the top, I roll through and drive it over the top, maintaining solid pressure on the crank to keep the gap opening up further and it must have done so because we ended up staying away for quite some time. In the end, it would have been probably around 20 minutes but we were caught once again, unfortunately and surely after being caught, I noticed something. I'd gone pretty hard on the pedals for around two hours. Now going into this race, I was hopeful of having somewhere between two to three hours in me but just goes to show race conditions are a very different story and on that three there were some slight surges before this dirt climb. Once again, this was the third time up it and as we're approaching, I can tell my legs are starting to go. In fact, I am shooting blanks. My legs are not working at all and the pressure picked up. I thought maybe I could sit off this surge but maintain enough pressure to stay close enough to reconnect maybe at the top of the dirt hill climb but I was severely wrong. My legs were essentially toast. So there went the bike race with the podium up ahead. Congrats to Ruben who smashed it out to take the Masters two win and Adam for taking out Masters one. Now because the race started late due to traffic control issues and because I got dropped like a sack potatoes there I unfortunately had to pull the pin after lap three because my kids were only organized up until 12.30 p.m. But I wasn't too upset because job was dumb, solid match practice and I now have a better viewpoint of where I am at. Now what did I learn about racing the giant TCR? Big tick, it's lightweight, it's stiff, it's highly responsive, it holds its line really well particularly around some of those slippery gravel corners. It's forgiving in unforgiving conditions, it's fast downhill and the last thing I noticed is I definitely need to get myself a proper bike fit. So there's already so many things I like about this TCR machine. Can't wait to share a full review and I'll catch everyone in the next video. 17 days to shake you Real range remind you race you.