First it was IPWR, then it was Basil, then TCR for a while, and now it’s back to being IPWR!
I woke up to see that day 19 had dawned bright and mostly clear. There was still a little bit of cloud around, but the sky was mostly blue and things were looking promising for a perfect day.
I got up and packed my gear, and was on my way pretty quickly.
Continue reading “Day 19 – Bring it home”It was going to be a great day. I knew that as soon as I woke up. It was going to be the second-last day of my IndyPac, and it was going to go through my hometown of Canberra. Of course, I wasn’t actually in Canberra yet, I still had nearly 70km to go before I got there, but most of it was to be on good roads.
After a pretty late night the night before I was a bit slow getting up, and it was a quarter past seven before I actually got on the bike, but then things went nicely. It was, overall, downhill to Canberra so I made good progress, and as promised the bridge was once again open. The only complication was that I didn’t want to go to Canberra.
Continue reading “Day 18 – Friendly Faces”
I woke up from a great night of sleep on the banks of the Lake Hume in the Murray River Valley, and it was a glorious day. After the headwinds across the Nullarbor I was now really getting lucky with the weather – it was cold and crisp but the sun was shining through the mist and the sky above was blue. It promised good things.
I got up and got packed, shaking the dew off my bivy bag. I knew I had a way to go up the valley so I put on some warm clothes and loaded up my bike. The day was glorious, but the mist was quite thick, and the sun was just coming up which meant I would be riding into the rising sun, and more importantly, the people coming from behind me would be driving into the rising sun. I certainly didn’t want anything stupid to happen at this late stage.
Continue reading “Day 17 – Home Roads”
It was the sixteenth day, and I woke up feeling rubbish. Specifically, I woke up feeling rubbish poking into my back – my choice of sleeping location the previous night hadn’t been ideal, and I’d spent the night shifting around trying to find the most comfy spot, but fundamentally I was sleeping just down the bank from a busy road where decades worth of cretins had been chucking their rubbish. It wasn’t ideal, and it had also been freezing cold.
But – the morning was beautiful, and I knew things would get good as soon as I got on the bike. I was in country I knew fairly well – at the foot of Tawonga Gap, in Bright. Bright is home of the Tour of Bright, one of the best road races in the country, and is also an excellent destination for a cycling holiday, so I’d been in the area a lot and knew this climb well. The cold weather and poor night of sleep had me moving very slowly, but once I actually dragged myself out of my sleeping bag and started moving things quickly started looking up. The sun was shining, the sky was blue, the air was crisp, and the day was looking great. I was still cold, but I knew the climb would soon have me warmed up. I got on my bike.
Continue reading “Day 16 – New Friends and Old”
It was a crisp, clear, beautiful morning when I woke up for day 15, and I lay there and appreciated it for a while before I dragged myself out of bed. When I finally did I surprised to realise that it wasn’t even particularly cold – I concluded that the night before I had basically just been scared, and looking for any half-way reasonable excuse to pull over. Today, though, I figured that everyone who had survived the night would be busy sleeping off their hangovers for at least half the day, making it a good time to get on my bike and enjoy the quiet roads!
Continue reading “Day 15 – Giving Cowboys a Bad Name”After my very late arrival the night before, this was a late start. I stopped to have a very nice breakfast with my generous hosts first, before finally heading off just after 9am. I rode for about half an hour before becoming very conscious of the sun on my ears again. It was still quite cool (I was wearing a jacket) so just pulling my buff up to cover my ears as well as my neck seemed like an easy solution.
The road undulated with a general upwards trend for the first hour and a bit out of Yarra Junction, before settling into a nice steady climb for 4km and then zipping back down the hill to Noojee.
Continue reading “Day 14: Mostly Good Friday”
The day started well, with a quick breakfast at Bernadette’s, and a briefing on the upcoming roads, before getting on the bike in time to enjoy an absolutely glorious sunrise. Bernadette had mentioned that I stood a fair chance of running into the local hard-core rider, who went up the road most mornings, and sure enough it wasn’t long until I ran into her and her husband. It made for a very pleasant spin up the road to Lorn, with fantastic weather, hardly any traffic, and good conversation. Just a brilliant start to the day.
By the time I reached Lorn I’d ridden 45km and it was definitely time for second breakfast, so a bit of a stop to refuel and restock was in order.
Continue reading “Day 13 – The People Make the Race”
Waking up in the Portland rider refuge I was greeted by a beautiful dawn but crisp cold air, dropping down into the single digit temperatures. I had a half a plan in mind for the day, and I did a pretty easy flat 50km before stopping for brunch in Yambuk. By that time it had warmed up to a balmy 16 degrees, which I thought was enough to justify both ice-creams, but the proprietor of the general store there was a bit surprised. After a quick chat about what I was doing he obviously concluded that none of my behaviours would ever make sense to him, but he was pretty impressed looking at the tracking map. Looking at the map also reassured me that I had a fairly comfortable lead, and I realised that as long as I kept going at about the pace I was already moving at I should be able to take the get to the Opera House first.
Continue reading “Day 12 – A Lazy Day”
I know it’s been a while since one of these went up, and there’s been a whole lot of reasons that maybe I’ll get to later, but finally, here’s the next chapter:
My alarm was beeping, and I was lying in a nice comfy bed. I was all alone, in a huge room. It took me a moment to remember where exactly I was, but as I got out of bed I remembered Tom and his generosity in putting me up in his pub, The Crown. What had been looking like a cold night beside a road somewhere had ended up nice and comfy!
All was quiet in The Crown at that time of the morning, and I didn’t see a soul as I gathered my stuff then slipped out the side door. It was quiet and cold and there was a light mist – basically a beautiful morning for a ride. I’d stocked up with food in the servo the night before, so I was able to roll along without stopping for the first hour and a half, before it warmed up enough that I wanted to take off a layer. Stopping to stash my clothing I also glanced at my phone, and suddenly I had a worry – was the bridge out?
Continue reading “Day Eleven – South Coast Cruising”
My alarm was beeping. My eyes opened. I saw grapes. My hand reached out and plucked a grape, which I quickly ate. I turned off the alarm. It was Day Ten.
The fact is, I actually did some significant damage to myself back in 2018 by not listening to my body and pushing through, and I essentially needed 6 months off my bike after I finished. I think I had done most of the damage before I hit Adelaide, but what it meant was that then I was in a lot of pain for the rest of the ride, and couldn’t ride hard. There were several people in front of me who I would have dearly loved to catch, but I just couldn’t. Because of that, I had come into this edition with a plan. I admit that it wasn’t a particularly complicated plan, but I’d managed to stick to it fairly well up to this point. According to the plan though, today was a day for a change.
Continue reading “Day Ten – So Many People”