9 Year Old Clocked Up Over 100kms in Preparation for the Great Victorian Bike Ride

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Great Victorian Bike Ride Preparation Part 2

by Jayne D'Arcy gvbr-preparation2-webMiles has clocked up over 100km on his ByK, and is showing all the symptoms of confidence: secretly riding behind me with his hands off the handlebars and giving me lots of double thumbs up when I've got the camera on him. I have a feeling that that won't be happening at the 50km mark of our day one 67km ride. The most we've ridden in one go is 28 km, so though I've let him know we'll be riding at least triple that most days, it probably won't hit him, (or me, for that matter) until we're actually doing it. I walked into a few bike shops looking for gear for our adventure, and didn't really feel at home until I met Jamie, at Avanti Plus Collingwood. Jamie had taken his daughter on the GVBR before - when she was at a similar age to Miles - and he knew what he was talking about. I decided to hand it over to him to sort out my to-buy list, and walked out later in (well, not literally in): 2 x new bike knicks for me, and two for Miles (neither of us have worn them before): a new Scott helmet for me that actually fits, red Ortlieb panniers (to fit the chocolate frogs and muesli bars in); butt cream (wait until I tell Miles what it's called!); spare tubes for both our bikes, a small bike pump and so on. I got a couple of light-weight tops in fluro yellow for me; Miles has enough sport tops to last him the five days. I decided that we'd both wear our usual shoes rather than get cycling shoes.

We've gone through the movie list for the five nights that we're there: will the promise of the nightly movie be enough to get Miles though the riding day? Let's hope so.

He's looking forward to seeing Captain America: The Winter Soldier on the first night, though we don't do any cycling on the first day! During training there's been one cry of "I don't want to do the stupid Great Victorian Bike Ride!" but when I asked him to repeat that for the camera he declined. Instead he got back on his bike and powered into a headwind on a busy city road. We're taking the ByK back to Melbourne Bicycle Centre before we leave for a check-up, ready for our 10am bike bus departure from Southern Cross Station on Saturday. gvbr-miles-riding-at-docklands-web

You can see again the fun of getting his new ByK and clocking up his training km's here:

All Packed and Ready to Go:

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