I’ve been having some trouble just lately with my website. It sort of bothers me that I have plans for all kinds of great adventures, but I can’t even seem to keep a website working, but there you go. Maybe it’ll come good soon if I ignore it for a while…
First things first: Cloudride Prologue was great. I had looked at that course ahead of time, and knew that the first 200km and the last 60 or so would be much faster on a gravel bike. Knowing the effort Steve puts into his courses though I suspected that the other part might turn out to be pretty tough. I wasn’t wrong. The country up in the Blue Mountains NP was just beautiful, but boy some of the roads were tough!
It was a great course, a great ride, and great fun. I was, unfortunately, exhausted before I even started, so I managed to ride into the top ten or so through Saturday but I pretty much knew I was going to stop and sleep for a long time, and I did. I initially set my alarm for 3am, but when it went off I was snug in my bivy under a beautiful sky with peace all around, so I reset it for 6 and went back to sleep. I would love to know how I would have done coming off 8 hours sleep a night the week before, but I don’t regret going back to sleep at all.
I got there in the end, coming at the perfect time to enjoy a beer and dinner at Bent Spoke while catching up with other riders. Overall it was once again a great ride. Maybe next year for the eight hours sleep thing…
As a side note, I had been talking beforehand to Ollie from Prism who make some pretty good knicks (riding shorts, for those of you who think lycra is more of a statement than a tool). He told me that there was someone doing 600km that day in a brand new pair of his knicks. I knew straight away that was just silly. In my defence, I had worn mine once already, and CRP was only 496km. If you’re wondering how they went, at the moment they’re in the heap of gear on the floor of my hotel room here in Fremantle. But more on that tomorrow. Right now, it’s time for my eight hours!