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?
Once upon a time before Covid, I had turned up to my local Park Run, and noticed a familiar looking guy there. As I looked at him, he looked back, and said something along the lines of “Hey, you’re Rowan, aren’t you?”
Thach and I had gone to school together around 30 years earlier (sorry to remind you how long it was, Thach) and had pretty much lost contact since then. He’s a nice guy though who does a lot of running and riding, and I thought to myself that was great, I was looking forward to seeing a lot more of him, including some running and riding and some catching up over various beverages. Then Covid arrived, and I don’t think I’ve actually seen him in the flesh since that day. We have kept in a loose sort of touch though, and I’m hoping soon we can go for a run together (or maybe a ride, Thach might get bored running with me). On this day though, he had sent me a message.
With the day warming up and the blue skies above me, it wasn’t a message I was expecting. I had announced before the start that I would not be riding up the Monaro Highway section, and would instead take Boboyan Rd, which runs parallel to it, and is a slightly shorter route but includes quite a bit more climbing as well as quite a bit of dirt, meaning it wouldn’t actually be much of a time advantage, but would have the benefit of keeping me off Monaro Highway, which I believe to be the worst stretch of road along the entire route. Boboyan Rd has some climbing, and a bit of dirt, but it also has a bridge. Thach’s message, arriving under clear blue skies, was to let me know that the storms and flooding had washed the bridge away, and the road was currently closed. Bugger.
Of course, it wasn’t an immediate problem – I was still only a day out of Adelaide so there was plenty of time, and if the bridge was still out by the time I got there I could always take the Monaro Highway instead. So basically, it was fine. Having said that though, one of the (few) ways in which IndyPac is easier than some other races is that you have surety about the route, so having that bit of doubt wasn’t great. Still, much better to be aware of a potential problem early rather than late!
Even the news of the heavy rains and flooding to the east did little to dampen my mood though – the weather couldn’t have been better where I was, the countryside was beautiful, and I was filled with feeling lucky to be alive, and lucky to be doing what I was doing.
I made a few stops to appreciate the views but basically I was rolling along fairly well at this point, heading to a town called Millicent. Now Millicent is not a huge place, but it happens to be somewhere I’ve ended up a few times for various reasons, and the last time I was there I knew I’d be coming back soon for IndyPac, so I borrowed a bike and did a bit of riding. It was a bike I knew and although functional it wasn’t what you’d call a great bike, but at least I came a little bit prepared – I bought my own pedals and shoes. Specifically, the pedals I brought were those same Garmin Vectors that have been mentioned earlier (Seriously? Baby oil to change a battery?). Anyway, I stuck them on this borrowed bike and did a bit of riding around, and one day I decided to follow the IndyPac route into town, and see how I went on a dodgy bike with fresh legs, compared to being on a great bike but with dodgy (and tired) legs back in 2018. The news was good. Really good. I beat my personal record along that stretch of road by about 30 seconds, but much better than that was the power I achieved. My legs were clearly on fire, with my peak 20-minute power being about 3% higher than anything I’d seen before. Obviously, my lack of training regime was finally starting to pay off, with my body adapting and my power development finally coming up. Awesome! I was so excited to see what I could do along that same stretch of road under race conditions.
Today was the day I tried it again under race conditions, and I was feeling pretty good. Even though overall I hadn’t slipped into the racing mindset that I had expected, this was only about a 30-minute effort that I was thinking about, and I felt like giving it a go. Part of that was due to actually knowing how long I had taken the last two times I tried it, and part was due to the little bit of shame and disappointment I had felt a few months earlier, when in my triumph of huge power I had decided that the borrowed bike deserved a quick clean, and noticed the crank length stamped on the crank.
Of course, if you’re measuring power through a pedal, all you can actually measure is force applied, not watts. To calculate watts, you need to multiply what you get by the crank length. So, if your pedals think they’re on 172.5mm long cranks, but they’re actually only on 162.5mm cranks, the peak 20-minute power they will tell you will be about 6% more than the actual power. Crap. Anyway, I still felt a bit of that shame, so I wanted to give this a bit of a go.
I had my head down and was rolling nicely as I headed towards town, when I noticed a rider doing a u-turn in front of me. Beautiful. Company would be great to spur me on. I went past him with a shouted g’day, and saw him locking onto my wheel. After about 5 words of conversation a string of trucks came by, so we hugged the shoulder and I focussed on holding a good line and avoiding the rubble. Unfortunately, by the time the last of the trucks passed us and I looked around, he was about 100m off my wheel. I was facing a classic ultra-racing dilemma.
I had noticed as I went past that he was on a pretty decent bike, and looked pretty comfortable on it. This obviously wasn’t someone who had just got on a bike for the first time in ten years, so part of me felt like he would understand if I didn’t wait. On the other hand, he had obviously come out to ride with me, which is both generous and complimentary, and I certainly didn’t want to be rude. So the question was, do I push on, or do I wait? At this point, and in this race, it wasn’t much of an issue. It was just one guy, and I knew I had a solid lead over second place, so stopping (or even slowing) would have been ok, but what if it happened a lot? I’ve certainly been in races where the organisers started putting out appeals over social media to please not interfere with the race, because the leader was being mobbed by people wanting to offer food, or get a photo, or have a chat. IndyPac, as a race without an organiser, has a low public profile but in some cases the crowds can be enough to change the final results of the race, which I’m sure no-one, organisers, racers, or fans, wants.
In this instance I was lucky, because I knew I was about to hit a town where I would stop for food. So I just pushed on – he would catch me when I stopped. And he did. Which was great, because he is one of the well known IPWR trail angels, a guy by the name of Brett who has, in the past, set up a refuge with facilities available to all riders as they pass through (I’m pretty sure he’s now moved off the route, which is a loss to all future riders). Today though I didn’t need anything – we stopped together at a café and were joined by Brad, who I had met in 2018 and who was in the midst of very impressive running streak – at that time he must have been somewhere over 1,500 consecutive days.
It was a nice lunch and I took a bit of time, but finally decided it was time to be going. Rolling my bike off the kerb I suddenly noticed how squishy things felt. I was running 32mm tyres and deliberately had the pressure reasonably low, but wasn’t aiming for 20psi, and that was about what I had, front and rear. I guess I shouldn’t have been surprised – I literally hadn’t considered their pressure since Fremantle. Happily, the guy standing next to me had set up a refuge for all passing riders, so I made the short detour to it after all and was soon on my way again, this time on much faster rolling tyres!
Millicent is just over 50km from Mount Gambier, and just before I left Brett casually mentioned something that stuck in my head for that whole distance – apparently Mt Gambier is still home to several members of the Opperman family, and they were watching the dots with interest and talking about coming out to greet riders. Now most students of Australian cycling history will know that Sir Hubert Opperman (“Oppie”) was one of the greatest road cyclists the country has produced. The idea of his descendants thinking I was worth coming out to see was pretty exciting! And just to add validity to my excitement I was happy to see that the list of names (including mine) that had been painted on the road for the 2018 edition was still visible. It’s always a thrill to see your name painted on the road, even if it is a few years old, so I was feeling great!
It was so exciting that I basically thought about it constantly until I actually rolled into Mt Gambier. At that point I saw an ice-cream shop, which was pretty much the only thing that could have been more exciting. After I’d finished my ice-cream though, and paused to appreciate the Blue Lake (which is very pretty), and was back on the road, I remembered the Oppies, and wondered if I would see them. As it is, I’m not sure. There is one section of the route through Mt Gambier where the road is very narrow with no passing room or room to stop. As I rode through it a car came up behind me and followed me through, and when the road widened a little they went by with a friendly toot and some very big thumbs up. Was it an Oppie? Well in my mind it was, and there’s very little that anyone can say that will change that!
Shortly afterwards the sad news came through that Kev “Pizza Rider” Paine was pulling the pin. Kev is IPWR’s answer to Thomas Camero, and will be reaching the finish line many times to come, but it wasn’t to be in ’21. As I write this though I see him down as the first entrant for the ’23 edition, and I look forward to cheering him down the road (edit: as I actually put this online, Kev is still basking in the glory of being an IPWR finisher – an overlander. A glory so great it almost makes up for the pineapple on pizza thing. Congrats again, Kev).
After Mt Gambier the route follows some beautiful roads through pine forests, and as long as there are no logging trucks around (there weren’t) it’s a beautiful ride down past Donovans (which looks like a perfect spot to escape from the world) and into Victoria.
Arriving in Victoria brought back memories of Shannon. Shannon lives in Portland, Victoria, and when I came through in 2018 Shannon rode out to meet me and accompany me into town, including bringing me to the rider refuge that he had set up a very small way off route. I was thinking to myself that I should have checked and seen if Shannon was running that rider refuge again this year, when I noticed a car approaching and pulling over. Of course, it was Shannon. He’s a teacher, and they had a camping trip on that night, so he was at work, but he’d been watching my dot and took his opportunity to duck out for long enough to meet me on the road and welcome me into Victoria, and to tell me that yes, the refuge was up and running, and his wife would be there to welcome me!
It was just under 50km from where he met me to the refuge, and mostly downhill. I did stop for a few moments to appreciate the beautiful moonrise, but even so the fact that it took me over 2 hours shows that I wasn’t exactly pedalling hard at that point. I did get there before Shannon’s wonderful wife Madlaina went to bed though, and once again I appreciated the warm welcome, and the hot shower!
It had been a big day but basically a great one. The weather had been perfect, the roads were great, the traffic was quiet, and the people were wonderful. I closed my eyes in the comfort of the refuge, thinking how lucky I was to be doing this.