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.
The very first edition of IndyPac was to be a clash of bikepacking titans. Jesse Carlson was a BMX age-group world champion who was persuaded by a friend to give mountain biking a go for a laugh. From there it was a small step to placing second in the 2013 Tour Divide, and from there it was just one more small step to win the 2015 TransAm. Kristoff Allegaert had won the Transcontinental Race in 2013, 2014, and 2016. In 2015 he won the Red Bull Trans Siberian Extreme. And Mike Hall had set a new (unratified) record for riding around the world in 2012, won the Tour Divide in 2013, won TransAm in 2014, and won Tour Divide again in a new record time in 2016. The three of them lined up in Freemantle in 2017.
Sadly, Jesse had to pull out early with a medical issue, with Mike and Kristoff battling it out in a thrilling race across most of the country. And then on a Friday morning on the Monaro Highway just inside the ACT border, Mike got hit by a car and killed.
I didn’t want to ride the Monaro Highway because it’s a dangerous bit of road with terrible drivers, as well as being horrible to ride on. I did want to pay my respects to Mike though, by visiting the memorial at the point where he was hit. I had a plan on how to do that, taking a little detour onto Sunshine Road. It would add an extra hour or two and was mainly dirt, but it was something I felt was worthwhile.
Disappointingly though it wasn’t to be – Sunshine Road wasn’t living up to its name, and hadn’t been for a few days. The crossing of Gudgenby River was well and truly flooded. Much as I wanted to visit the memorial, my fundamental racing philosophy are that decisions should consider safety first. The river was flowing fast and was deep and murky, to the point where I just didn’t think I could cross it safely, so I didn’t cross it. Given the focus Mike always put on safety in his races, I was pretty sure he would understand.
I spent a few minutes sitting at the river and appreciating the opportunities still open to me, and while I was there I made sure to post on social media to say I was still heading into Canberra through Tharwa, and to give an updated ETA. I hadn’t heard any concrete plans, but I was very much hoping there’d be at least one person in Canberra who fancied coming out to see me, even in the middle of a work day.
Heading on down the road was interesting – I was now on a section that is used in a lot of club racing within Canberra, so it was somewhere I had ridden a lot, but usually at a much quicker pace. Still, it was a nice day and I was enjoying the ride.
I was approaching the suburbs of Canberra when I saw a rider headed towards me. I wondered if it was someone I knew, and as they got closer, I realised it was – it was Bruce, who I race track with, and he’d come out just to see me! I was stoked.
Heading further into town we got joined by more riders, with most being fellow track racers. It is a bit funny that two of my favourite types of racing are at such opposite ends of the spectrum – on the one hand there is the long distance unsupported races where you cross an entire continent, and on the other is racing on the velodrome, where it isn’t uncommon to race for 200m. One of the many great things about track though is the social side of it. Basically, you do your race, then go and sit in the stands to wait for your next race, but of course while you are there you chat with the others who are waiting, and cheer for/sledge those who are out racing at the time. It makes for a great atmosphere and builds great friendships.
As we approached Parliament House my good friend Benny had to stop with a puncture. It immediately brought the thought to my mind that so-far I hadn’t really had any big issues, and not a single puncture. My education and work has been mainly in science and engineering – very logical and fact-driven fields that don’t make much allowance for things like luck and fate. Even so, I was quick to push these thoughts out of my mind – just because you don’t believe in fate it doesn’t mean you want to push it! I also remembered the last time I rode IndyPac, where I didn’t have a single puncture all the way to Canberra, and then got four in the last 400km up to Sydney. Anything can happen, and you can have an unexpected problem that will lose you a heap of time. With that in mind, and even though the next rider was still in Victoria, I didn’t stop with Benny – it’s sort of a basic rule of racing that you don’t stop to wait for people who are outside the race.
We rode up to parliament a little before 11 and I was delighted to see my mother there waiting to great me, with her bike. We had a quick stop at parliament with some more friends arriving including Gav (another trackie) bringing his kids along – it’s always great to see the next generation, and their whole family is racing these days – and then I said I had to get some food, so I headed into town with little peloton of support. To my delight the peloton grew by one more on the way into town, with my number-one supporter coming out to join me.
We went in to BentSpoke for lunch. Bent Spoke is a Canberra brewery that makes some really excellent beer, and also supports a lot of bike racing, including being the start and finish point for the Monaro Cloudride, a great little 1,000km off-road loop around the region that I’ve had the pleasure of taking part in on a couple of occasions. Cloudride was actually happening at the time, and I had thought I might have run into some of the riders, but since none of them had quite completed the course I took the opportunity to grab a quick “finishers photo” and post it to the follower’s group, just for a laugh!
Lunch was great and it took a very long time for me to get back on my bike, and even then it was only to go up the road to the bakery, and stock up on some food. Next stop was into RideShop for a bit more air into the tyres – I’d had them pretty low for the gravel from Adaminaby, and a bit more air pressure would make things more pleasant for the trip to Sydney.
From there, the next step was to ride out of town. This was, honestly, hard to do. Happily I still had a few friends and my number-one fan riding with me, and there were a few more came out to say g’day on the way out. Fellow overlander Michael rode a fair way out of town with me, and it was my number-one fan who was the last to turn around – a sad moment but I was pretty confident I’d be seeing her again some time the next day, so not so bad.
I settled in to just riding at that point – I still didn’t have a destination in mind but it was a nice afternoon so I planned to get a good bit of riding in. Bundanoon would make about 250km though, and that sounded reasonable. On the way out of Bungendore though I paused to say g’day to another dot-watcher, and he asked if I’d get as far as Robertson that night. My quick answer was probably not, it was probably a bit further than I felt like riding and I didn’t want to push things at that point. Then something occurred to me though, and the answer changed, to maybe, I’d see how I went. As soon as I said it though I knew I wasn’t stopping in Robertson that night.
The thing about Robertson is that it is at the top of the Macquarie Pass. This is a steep and winding descent, with virtually no shoulder, and a heap of traffic. Going down it on a bike you’re actually usually faster than a lot of that traffic, but still the idea of doing it when no-one else was there had a lot of appeal. If I reached Robertson in the small hours of the morning the sensible thing would be to just keep going down the hill.
With that in the back of my mind I headed of to Tarago, for some more food and a bit of a stretch. From there it was a couple of hours to Marulan, and I decided that would be a good decision point – stop and sleep early or push on down the pass.
I rolled up to the roadhouse in Marulan feeling good. It was still a nice evening, and everything was working well. It was a pretty easy decision to do one more stock-up of food and then head out. From there I had a brief bathroom break in Bundanoon and a check of the weather. It was still ok, but looked like there might be a little rain coming in. I decided I’d rather take my chance with what might be a little rain than wait until morning and share the road with a whole lot of traffic and probably quite a lot of mist, so the plan stayed the same. The rain hit just before I reached Robertson, and knowing I was going to be rolling downhill for a long time I stopped to put on a jacket, then headed straight through Robertson and down the pass. As I expected, it was the perfect time to ride it. The road was wet so I took it fairly conservatively, but basically I had a smooth and traffic free descent.
Reaching the bottom a little after 2am with a steady rain falling my first priority was to find a good spot to stop and sleep. Unfortunately, at the bottom I was the road went pretty much straight into suburbia, so I kept rolling through until I noticed two big churches, one on either side of the road. It was clearly time to decide whether I was more Presbyterian or Catholic, and the nice covered entryway convinced me that for that night at least I was more Presbyterian. It was a nice dry spot that sheltered me and all my gear, and despite the main road I slept fairly well.
