Centennial Park is located just a couple of kilometres from the CBD and provides a safe 3.8km circuit for cyclists, runners, rollerbladers, cars and horses. It achieves this by providing 5 concentric circles around the park - a one way road is marked into two, the outside lane being designated for bikes and rollerbladers, the inner lane for cars. Inside that is space for parking and then within that is a footpath for walking/running and inside that a track cross country running and then the innermost track for horses.
The route is relatively flat (for Sydney!) with a total climb of 26m around the circuit.
If you head there early in the morning, say before 8.00am, you will be inundated with bunches of cyclists training, more generally the hard core road cyclists and triathletes. They tend to ride with broken speedos on their bikes, or no speedos at all - there is a 30km/hr speed limit in the park which few of the more serious cyclists seem to adhere to. Later on in the morning the area will be frequented more by the recreational cyclists and beginners, travelling at a more sedate (and legal!) pace.
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| Early morning in Centennial Park |
A number of triathlon clubs do brick sessions there as it's a perfect spot to do a few laps on the bike followed up by a run.
The only downer is the fact that the course is so short. It's difficult to imagine doing your 6 hour long flat ride for ironman as laps around Centennial Park - the person who first told me about the ride claimed that he was using it for his flat training in preparation for IM Western Australia. I personally think I'd be ready to chew my arm off with boredom after about an hour and, in fact, that's about the longest I've managed before getting so bored I had to ride out of the park and go explore some hills in the area!
However for rides of up to an hour it's an ideal spot.
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