Since moving to Sydney, I’ve been trying to look for good riding routes. We have the cook river nearby which runs all the way from the airport to Homebush. I’ve been riding that route a bit and while it can’t compare against the Wollongong Bike Track, I’ve gone ahead and added the kilometer markings on the map. This would be helpful with planning your training especially if you do a lot of intervals.

Below is the elevation change when riding from Tempe to Strathfield.

cooks-river-tempe-to-strathfield-elevation-change

The Cooks River bike track is designated as a low speed recreation bike track so expect lots of people, prams and cyclist on the road. My recommendation is to ride early to avoid the crowds. Also in the maps, apart from the KM markers, I’ve also added red diamond markers where hazards exist. The hazards are things like road crossings, narrow underpasses and wooden bumpy bridges which have 90 degree bends on the ramps on and off the bridge.

The road crossing along the bike track is something that annoys me greatly. It’s not a straight crossing to get across the road, but instead there is a single lane crank course that you need to maneuver at the middle of the road. Not too bad on a quiet day but quite challenging when there’s cyclists trying to cross on both sides and when wearing cleats. For this reason I highly recommend not wearing cleats when cycling on this bike track. Below is a picture of how that crossing looks.

road-crossing-on-cooks-ricer-bike-track

There are also two other hazards worth mentioning along the bike track, one is the wooden bridge across the river. It’s a hazard because to get onto the bridge, you will need to make two 90 degrees turn in quick succession and the wooden bridge is really bumpy too. Again because of the sharp turns, it’s pretty much a single lane on and off ramp for the bridge. Below is a picture of the bridge.

woodne-bridge-with-awkward-ramp

The other hazard is a bridge underpass which is very narrow and just fits a single bike though.

So there you go, you can find more information about the road crossing and bridge on the route map above. Although I have mentioned some negatives about the bike track, it’s still a better alternative than riding on Sydney’s busy roads and given how dense a city Sydney is, we’re pretty lucky to even have such long bike tracks. Such don’t expect to be doing any PBs on this bike track.

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