Last year Adam and I went out to have fun for this event, we had wheelie and skid competitions, rode with mates, stopped at bakeries and ice cream shops and never took any of it seriously at all, it was a complete hoot! :)
So this year we set out with the same plan, we even organised some buddies to ride with and the plan was to cruise around Canberra in a big group and generally muck up and have fun, but with a stagggered start our buds were set to start over an hour after us, bugger.
We were set to start in the first group at 8am, which wasn't ideal as we are hopeless with map setup, we only has enough time to mark up the South half of the map and rush to the start. I'd brought a map board along but had no time to work out how to fit it to my bike (we just kept the map in Adam's camel back), a bit of a shocker, still we didn't care; there to have fun not race.
As per last year we cleaned up the Stromlo points first, as they were at the top of the Red Traverse and in the Berm track, major fun! Then out to Narabundah Hill and Mt Taylor where we even managed to out navigate some of the boys from the club Crits that flew past us racing us while we cruised along and chatted; beating them to couple of checkpoints surprised me, we are crap navigators, so how we out did anyone is amazing! It also showed up how much navigation defeats pure speed and racing.
Down Mt. Taylor and heading for Kambah adventure playground we're rolling along having a lovelly day in the sun, until I had a flat that is ;) Somehow this flat revs us up to pick up the pace, I dunno why, but from here on we started to hammer it (and I note around this time last year we got into rac mode too, I guess there's no escaping it!).
We flew into Richardson shops for some face painting and refueling at the supermarket, a short break here to plan the rest of the run out, deciding to skip Fyshwick we went for Red Hill at a cracking pace, by by the time we go there and climbed it, Adam had started to fade, so I got him to sit on my wheel while we went for Pialligo, then around the North side of the lake to the city. I could tell Adam had enough by now, but stupidily I pushed him to go for the points on Southern ide of the lake; by the time we hit Weston park it was clear he was done, so we went into cruise mode and rolled for the Zoo and Stomolo a good hour before the finish time. We talked about getting Coppins Crossing, but the reality was we'd achieved the goal of having fun and heading out there for those points would only ruin Adam's day, so were they worth it? No! (no even vaguely!)... so we granny geared it back to Stromolo and finished 45 minutes early, having had a solid 6 hour ride (which is all I wanted from the event, a good training ride).
Sadly, we never took the time out for a coffee or a bakery stop, but we did have several bunny hop and skid competitions and some refuel stops at Richardson and Griffith shops, which meant we could run the race on one water bottle each and get snacks on the go. I even finished with a spare power bar in the pocket, so we didn't burn the energy I thought we might.
For Kylie and Nic this would be the biggest single ride either of them had ever attempted, by a long way! They both managed the 7 hours easily and surprised me finishing with a smile on their faces (I expected pained expressions ;)), an awesome effort guys!
All in all a top day of fun out with the buds, sweet ;)
Thanx Adam, that was heaps of fun and I can't wait for next year!