The gong ride was great. It was definitely a different experience to how I remembered it in 1990 and 1991, there were so many more people (11,000), so much so that we couldn’t even ride for a while, and had to walk the first kilometre before finding some space to actually get rolling. The officials stopped us (for great lengths of time too) so many times, in the end it really was a cruise more than anything else.
We started as a group. Richie, Jing, Felix and Eric and I rode together and there was hardly any pedalling at all for the first 30km’s (coasting and stopping!). We stopped off at Loftus to take a pee break (thank God we managed to skip the lines to piss on trees) and then headed for the crazy downhill twisties through the national park. My brakes were on as hard as I could grab them at times, the bike’s fantastic but the brakes are so poor I just had to do a brake burner all the way down. I stuck to my game plan though, which was to take it easy on the downhills and absolutely hammer on the uphills, and that I did.
On the 1st big hill I got out of the saddle and just attacked it and never looked back. I must have overtaken over 100 people through the national park and I didn’t let up until I got the finish line (I only counted 7 people overtaking me in the last 35km’s). Going solo was super fun and I got to have the best of both worlds (riding in a group for the 1st half and alone for the 2nd half).
I finished the ride in 4hrs 8minutes with an average speed of 20kms/hr. All in all it was a great ride despite not being able to pass most of the time (apart from the uphills) and to top it all off Richie and I were picked up by the girls at the finish line, that was an absolute life saver! Onto the pics:
6AM rise and shine. Bowl of cereal, coffee and a bananna and I was off.
Richie managed to borrow this lovely old steelie off a mate. Reynolds tubing and old school dura ace gear on it too.
Start line.
Guy doing it on a BMX. I even saw a guy on a unicycle!
Was so packed that it took a while to actually find some space to get rolling! (photo by Jing).
Richie, Eric and Jing at Loftus.
The paino did so well. It’s so damn fast going up hills. I got used to, and now love the friction gear shifting, the saddle/bars set-up was perfect and I only felt a bit of tightness in my shoulders and neck but not on my hands. The brake levers being so far away from my bars are complete rubbish and I’m very tempted to do something about them as they’re the only thing that let me down.
Spectacular views at the end-ish. (photo by Jing).
Me – Jing – Beers – Finish (thanks Andy and Miki for the beers and food! MUCH appreciated!).