Our 5am wake up call had Lake’s Entrance greet us with a balmy 4 degrees and saw team choice in a word of pain. A horror night on laundry duty ended at 10:30pm with the erstwhile and legendary “Evo” of Team Boost our support crew finishing off so we could get some much needed sleep. The team was pleasantly surprised to hear that the forecast hail storm had blown over a few hours earlier.
Due to the distance (210km) and 5 large climbs (totaling over 2000m collectively) the decision was handed down to split the group into two teams. The first group rolled out at 6:30am with the second group, chomping at the bit, being released at 7:00am intent on mowing down team 1 before the morning tea break at 60km’s in. After some dubious navigation by the first team the contest was declared a dead heat (by Lowy in the first group).
A quick stretch and hydration tutorial by Alan at Recovery Sports saw us roll out at a respectable pace of 27km/hr whilst taking in the beautiful scenery on the road to Cann River. (Insert movie )Our first major hill climb saw Ricky Horvat giving Charmaine (a less experienced rider) some advice on climbing technique, only to have her take his advice and fly past him on the next hill!
2 climbs and many km’s down saw the local traffic pick up. All in all the riders were pleasantly surprised by the quality of the road as well as the friendly waves and smiles, not to mention the occasional air horn.
Stopping at Cann River for lunch our amazing caterers from Canadian Kitchens again made sure that every one of our 140km’s worth of energy was replaced. We were joined for lunch by some fantastic locals who generously donated all they could and uplifted spirits amongst the riders and crew. A few of the riders took the chance to get some remedial work done from Robyn aka house of pain. It seemed that the ‘few’ riders was in fact just Andrew “Lemmo” Lemon, who needed the entire Boost Mobile support crew to tend to his aches and pains.
After lunch the riders were again split into 2 groups for the remaining 77km climb into Mallacootta. Team Choice sent 3 of its members into the first group who ended the day with an average speed of 30km/hr (quite incredible considering the 2000m+ of climbing) Of note in the first group to leave lunch was some fantastic banter including a song adaptation which rung out “sweet home Mallacootta, where the Powerade is blue.” The scenery along the trip into our destination was nothing short of breathtaking with long sloping hills which were painful on the legs but easy on the eyes. Funnily enough there were similar reports of a trip full of singing from the second group to leave lunch. It must have been all that was capable of distracting the riders as the final 77km’s seemed far longer than the first 140km of the day.
Upon arrival the entire team congratulated each other on an incredible day and given how big it was, the energy and elation took everyone to a higher place. The Caterers hit town to get supplies and were stoked that Foodworks Mallacoota came to the party with boxes of bananas, lollies and juice to the value of $350.The evening’s events were just as colourful with the Cougar (Geoff Coombes) going to extremes to spur the locals in the pub into donating over $1000. A fantastic day ended with some light (painful) massage in preparation for the trip to tomorrow. Merimbula, here we come!
No comments:
Post a Comment