Day One

Day One: Leaving Freo

There we stood, lined up in front of the lighthouse, in total silence as we paid our respects to the late, great, Mike Hall. I was thinking about Mike’s approach to life and what he would have done with the opportunity before us all now, when suddenly a voice broke into my thoughts. Damian was saying “See you in Sydney”. It was time to go. IPWR 2021 had started.

I glanced around. No-one was moving. It really had sounded like a start gun to me. I clipped in, and rolled away. Alan rolled off just after me, and then Ed, and then the others. “Ah”, said Alan, “looks like we’re riding in age order then. We should finish that way too.” As the youngest guy there, that seemed ok to me, so I said “Great, we’ll make that the race plan”, and we both agreed it sounded good.

I pedalled with Alan and Ed for a while, and then realised that the others had taken their time rolling away and were actually quite a way behind us. It seemed like it would be a good time to meet people now, because you never know what will happen later on, so I eased up and drifted back off the wheels.

There were lots of people riding out to see us off, and it took me a while to find all of the other riders, but it was an effort I was glad to make at the time, and am more glad I made in retrospect. It was nice to have a least a brief chat with the other guys – over the coming days and weeks we would be a long way apart, but sharing an experience in a way that just can’t be described.

Once I’d had the chance to meet everyone I began to slowly work my way forward again. The field was quite strung out by that time, and we were starting to move a bit more quickly. Chatting with Joe (JJ Rider) we were warned of a fallen tree ahead of us on the path, and they weren’t kidding. It was really a big tree that we needed to dismount and climb over. Joe paused there and I headed on, eventually catching Ed (Eddie B) at the top of Crystal Brook Rd, which is a solid sort of climb. At this point I had Damian, who organises some ultra-races and also does a huge amount to help riders arriving for IPWR to get sorted out in Perth, accompanied by some guy I’d never met, riding on my wheel, but I was pretty sure there was only one rider ahead of me planning to go the whole way, and I was pretty sure it was Alan (Tour clown under). He had opened up a pretty good gap, and as he came into view I considered what I knew about him: He wasn’t simply a professional comedian, he was a professional comedian from Glasgow, so I thought he must be pretty quick to spot when someone was pulling his leg, and he also must be familiar with the odd colourful expression (did you know that Glasgow was recently found to be the UK’s swearingist city, and the most commonly used word was “F***”?) so I thought I’ do my best to make him feel at home.

I tried to be as quiet as I could coming up to just behind him, before giving it a bit of stick and yelling in my best stage voice “Oi, Alan, what the f*** is this bulls***? There’s no point us making a race plan if you’re just going to go and ignore the b******!”

From his expression as he looked around at me I decided that maybe he wasn’t that quick at spotting when someone was pulling his leg. Anyway, I gave him a wink and a grin as I pulled away, but just as I was thinking I should probably explain someone else came up to grab some video footage of me, and by the time we’d done that Alan had dropped back. I figured he must have decided to stick to the plan after all.

After the video I dropped down into the nice bush on the Mundaring Weir Road. It was a beautiful morning, and I was feeling good and enjoying the ride. That road has some climbing on it too, and as I hit the steeper section an older guy on an older Trek came past me. He looked quite calm and like this was what he did every day, but he was pedalling at about 30 rpm. I didn’t have a lot in the way of a plan for the ride, but the two things I was paying some attention to were keeping my heart rate down and my pedalling cadence up – if I had pedalled as slow as him and pushed as big a gear as he was pushing I think my knees would have blown up in minutes. Still, as I said, he looked like he did it every day so that’s a pretty good example of different people working in different ways!

I stopped at some traffic lights in Mundaring and Damian and the guy who was with him came up to me. They were on my wheel for the next 60 odd kilometres, and Damian and I had a good chance for a chat and some reminiscing about when we both rode in 2018. As we approached York I knew that the wonderful Joanne would be waiting with a refreshment station, and Damian suggested that I go ahead so he could film my arrival. I did so, and the arrival was great. Joanne has been doing this for a while, and has a bit of experience in riding ultras herself, so she knows what a rider will be looking for and had set up the station perfectly.

I rolled up and she immediately started providing a continual stream of freshly made wraps and bananas and delicious protein ball type things, all of which I performed a magic vanishing trick on while I filled my water and reapplied sunscreen. After about five minutes of that I realised that Damian was in fact still filming, so apologies to anyone who sat through what must have been some awfully boring video. Joanne had also given Damian some food, and then asked if the other guy who had ridden in with us wanted some food. I had no idea, we hadn’t exchanged a word in the 60km he’d been on my wheel.

“Hey mate, what’s your name?”

His name was Colin, and after initially saying he didn’t need food because it was for those doing the full ride he eventually relented and came and joined us.

Pretty soon I decided it was time to go, so I grabbed some supplies for the road and headed off, waving goodbye to them all.

I had reminded myself to be careful not to overdo it on the first day, and had set my Garmin to tell me if my heart rate got too high, and then just settled into spinning along and covering the distance. I was feeling good and rolling pretty easily, for a while. And then after about an hour, I felt a twinge in my calf. Just a little shadow of a hint of a suspicion of a cramp. I backed right off, I wanted to stay well away from cramping. Everything was good, for a while. And then it was back. This time, it was a whisper of a rumour of a cramp. I sat up and shifted around to get my blood flowing through my legs a bit better, and eased off further. A few minutes later, there it was, the suggestion of a cramp.

By this time I was approaching Quarading, so I pulled in to the service station there and bought some food and drink, and then went outside to stretch while I consumed it all. While I was stretching, I started cramping. No hints, no suggestions, actual hard and painful cramps. I spent a long time stretching and eating and drinking, and finally was feeling good enough to think about riding. As I was packing up, who should come riding in but Colin. We had a brief chat and he said he wasn’t sure how far he was going, but as I rode off I said I’d probably see him up the road. He said he didn’t think so.

It was only about an hour or so later that I had to stop at the roadside for a quick break and some stretching. I looked up as I was about to ride off, and sure enough, there was Colin coming around the corner. He caught me pretty quickly, and said he was amazed that he had caught me again, because I was going so fast. He was seemingly totally oblivious of the fact that having caught me, he was obviously going that fast too!

Anyway, Colin turned out to be great company and we rolled along chatting for quite a while, including an ice-cream stop in Bruce Rock. He was also very strong on the bike, and I’m looking forward to seeing him on the start line for 2022. By that time he’d made a plan to stop in Merriden.

People always ask if I have a plan for the ride, and the answer is no, I don’t. I’ve given up planning these things, because they are just so unpredictable. In this instance the closest I had to a plan was that I was going to ride to Southern Cross (428km) and then see how I felt, and figure out where I would stop as I went. But Merriden (320km) sounded like a good spot to grab some food.

We rolled into town together, I grabbed some food for then and some more for the road, and he headed off to his hotel. I ate some of the food, stretched a bit, went and found a loo (do not go to the public toilets in Merriden on a Saturday night) and then swung my leg over the bike and prepared to head off. But I felt terrible.

My legs were still cramping a little, my butt was sore, my back was stiff, and I felt exhausted. For the first time, it occurred to me that I might not even get to Southern Cross that night. In fact, once I was thinking about it, I realised that I was only just going to get out of Merriden.

I rolled out of town, awfully slowly, and basically got away from the streetlights then found a convenient spot to bivvy. I was next to the train line and could still see the lights of the town, but I really didn’t care. It was only 9pm but I was exhausted and just needed sleep, and where I was would have to do. After 326km and around 2,500m of climbing, day one was over.