5.20am. That’s what time it was when Ben left the house, in the dark, on Sunday morning. I wished him luck, waved goodbye, and decided to try to get another hour’s worth of sleep before getting ready myself. It didn’t work. We were too buzzy.
I had planned big things for Woodstock the bicycle – he was naked: pannier-less, sans-basket. I thought I could shove a bag with a change of clothes and various other goodies under the pannier rack, but then I freaked out at the last minute, worried that the bag would come flying off and wreak all kinds of havoc. So in the end I went with a bottle of Gatorade and a lightweight jacket, with my ID and some loose change in a coin pouch in the back of my gym pants. We were streamlining. In my mind, I needed all the help I could get and if that meant slightly less wind resistance, then I’d take it.
Woodstock and I met Carly-le and her new bike Lady Bump at Newtown station. Carly was even wearing an orange bike shirt, which for someone who has more than a passing aversion to this colour, was already a spectacular step forward. One small step for lady, one giant leap for lady-kind! We wheeled our way down to Sydney Park and were greeted with our first volunteers, frantically waving their plastic noisemakers and pointing giant foam fingers leading us to the start line. We hadn’t even started and we were getting cheers.
Ben’s group had left the starting line at 6.15am so he was well on his way. Our start time was 8am. We saw the main group surge from under the starting flag while we ate a preparatory Mars Bar, shared a free muffin and pinned our rider numbers on. We also nabbed some free Power Bar Gel Blasts, intense little chewy sweets claiming to be pure energy. We saw two bears on a tandem go by. And then we went under the flag, and were on our way. It was 8.05am.
If there was one thing we didn’t want to do, it was burn out early. Neither of us had ridden anywhere even close to 90km in one sitting before, so our mantra became “slow and steady finishes the race”. Most of the roads at the start were segregated by witches hats, so I felt pretty safe, and since we’d left after the main 8am rush we didn’t have the problem of being stuck within a cluster of cyclists (or a ‘peloton’ as I learnt the collective term is for such a group). This had actually been one of my main concerns – being trapped in a pack and having to keep up with them for fear of causing an accident. Fortunately we had long stretches of road to ourselves and were overtaken by many more pelotons as we continued to the first stop at a leisurely pace.
The bike track along Brighton-le-Sands was a pretty cool. To our left was Botany Bay and on the other side of that was the airport, complete with 747s magnificently cruising in over the water. We decided to take some photos while we still looked ‘fresh’.
There were 8 pit stops along the way, and we checked in at the first one to adjust our seats (mine had slipped down to a level where I could just about lick my knees). 14kms down and we’d not even broken a sweat. However it was 16kms to the next one at Loftus Oval and I was quite relieved to see that one appear. We restocked on fluids and muffins (much tastier than expected). I’d received a text from Ben saying he’d made it past Waterfall and the 10kms after that were awful. We tried not to pay too much attention to it.
We passed the third checkpoint, Engadine, where the 58km riders were joining us. “Carly-le,” I said, “We could have started from here!” We continued all the way to Waterfall where we did a quick refill of our water bottles and pushed on. Carly saw an ambulance with a woman inside looking a little worse for wear. We tried not to pay too much attention to that either.
I thought Ben had his checkpoints confused, because after Waterfall it got breathtakingly grand. We were in the National Park now and had a super awesome downhill ride for what felt like an eternity. Dappled sun through the forest canopy, whipbirds cheering us on, just a few other bikes dotted on the road, no cars. It was one of the best things I’ve ever done. It was like a scene from some triumphant coming-of-age film. I felt like whooping and hollering and the wind whistled past like one long joyous high five. (I later found out that Ben’s group had been escorted down this section due to a quite serious accident halfway down. That, combined with being in a tight huddle of cyclists, made the experience not quite as enjoyable for him). It was also somewhere along this section that we hit the 45km mark. Halfway!
The next checkpoint after Waterfall was the National Park lunch stop. We had told ourselves we’d stop there and get a sausage, and that was quite a motivating factor once the wonderful decline started turning in the opposite direction. “Just after this next hill,” we encouraged each other. After what felt like a long time, and halfway up a particularly long and winding incline, Carly turned to me and said, very calmly, “Dee dee… where are the sausages?”
You can only imagine how disappointed we were when we made it to the checkpoint and they HAD RUN OUT OF SAUSAGES. Overall this event was extremely well organised, but the lack of sausages was a bit traumatic. Yes it was almost 12pm by this point, but it wasn’t like there wasn’t anyone behind us… we had to settle for a couple more muffins instead and Carly sampled some coffee. We had a little rest there and chomped up some more gel bursts before heading back onto the hill. Still 39km to go.
What we didn’t realise at this time was that we were halfway up Bald Hill – the toughest part of the course. Not knowing this was inadvertently an excellent strategy. It was reassuring to see how slowly everyone was taking off after the lunch stop, and we were all pedalling uphill but still with enough energy left to briefly converse with each other. There was an amazing man who had a buggy attached to the back of his bicycle, pulling along his wife who suffered from MS. We rode with them for a while. We also saw a surprising number of tandems and a few younger children putting in the hard yards. We even saw the bears again. We were so rejuvenated after the beautiful ride through the national park and the lunch stop that we didn’t seem to recognise we were in the middle of the difficult bit. We started
overtaking people on these hills. We were machines!
Just as we started to tire of going uphill, a vast sky appeared. Otford Lookout greeted us, with 30kms to go.
This was the last time that Carly and I stopped. We were surprised at how well we were holding up, but we also could see Wollongong far in the distance. And the hardest bit was over (theoretically).
At the top of Bald Hill, we could see down into Stanwell Park and the
Grand Pacific Drive ahead of us. Due to the steepness of the hill, we were escorted by police motorcycle down into the town, but at greater speed than expected. Going downhill is fun. The views were gorgeous and the beach smelt wonderful. Going over the Sea Cliff Bridge was fricking amazing too. Hello Pacific Ocean.
The last 20kms, while not terribly challenging terrain, was tough on tired legs. The hills were small but heaved with effort. Scarborough was the one place where we were forced to dismount, three quarters of the way up a sharp ascent. I made the mistake of trying to stand and pedal. It was my downfall (not literally. I am happy to say we made it through the entire ride accident-free). As we went by Scarborough Hotel, we observed a large number of bikes locked up outside. Turns out that many seasoned riders use this as an un-posted pit stop for a hard-earned beer. We pulled up at some traffic lights later and one of the policemen asked if we’d stopped there. We hadn’t, but some others in our pack had, and asked “you haven’t brought your breathalizer, have you?” In keeping with the spirit of the thing, the policeman patted his pockets and replied “nah, don’t think I’ve got it on me today”.
We were looking for markers telling us how far we had to go, and each time seemed like it was lying. “That definitely felt like longer than 5kms.” My right knee decided to complain very loudly at around the 20km mark. We passed 15kms, 13kms, then finally 10kms. We had made it to Wollongong. Traffic lights kicked in and stopping became the enemy – red lights meant a dismount and violent cramping. I tried to push with my good leg and keep the other one moving but without the pressure.
Then, a bike path, and people waving, and lovely volunteers yelling encouragement as we neared the end. Stuart Park - 1 km! I could barely believe it. Then we saw the Finish banner – what an amazing sight. Determined to finish strong, we both pedalled up the path – and then were waved onto the grass towards the finish line which was a horrible swampy mess. It felt so cruel to have to crawl through this quagmire in the final 10 metres and all I could think of was “don’t fall off now… please don’t fall off now…” Fortunately, neither of us did. According to my watch (which was later discovered to have gained 20 minutes during the course of the journey… strange), we arrived at 3.55pm. 6 hours and 50 minutes of cycling. We were still amazed. Did we just do that?
