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.
The route at that point is on big, busy, and noisy roads, but they’re also fairly fast roads, and they head fairly quickly towards the ocean, so it wasn’t long before I was catching glimpses of it through the buildings. Just to be clear, that’s the Pacific Ocean. I hadn’t quite finished IndyPac, but I had ridden from the Indian Ocean to the Pacific Ocean. Now it was just a matter of finishing it off.
As I headed through town I noticed a guy waving me down. I stopped for a quick chat and he mentioned that he had been honking and waving as he went the other way. So some of the business and noise was due to me! He also mentioned that he was just returned from an attempt on CloudRide. That was nice, because I immediately knew he would know a bit about how I was feeling!
Soon enough though it was time to head off, so I kept rolling on up the road. It is a very beautiful part of the coast around this area, and despite the route not being the most scenic option I was still seeing some beautiful beaches. I was on basically the same roads that were used for the 2022 road-race world championships, that made half the cycling world want to visit Wollongong, and I was certainly enjoying it myself.
Heading through Austinmeer things got even better, as I saw a large crowd of fans who had come out just to cheer for me! Well, ok, it turned out that they were cheering for the race generally, and me as a side effect. In fact, one young fella especially wasn’t really cheering for me at all, but instead telling me that he thought I would probably break down very soon, and that I would get passed by the rider currently in second place. I was starting to take it personally, and then I realised that the rider currently in second was none other than the mighty Eddie B, and I also realised that Eddie came from somewhere around Wollongong.
A quick question confirmed my suspicion that actually he came from Austinmeer, and what I was seeing wasn’t my fan-club at all, but Eddie’s fan club, practicing for when he came through. Still, they practiced pretty well, with lots of good vibes, a delicious croissant, and just a tiny bit of friendly banter. Eventually we all agreed that it was time for me to be heading on (apart from the young fella who suggested I should stop and enjoy the town for a couple of days), so I headed off up the road.
Disappointingly I didn’t have all that much more of the glorious flat roads and ocean views before the bumps started again. Standing out among these bumps was the Bald Hill climb at Stanwell Tops – nearly 2.5km at 7.6%, but front loaded with the first 1.3km being nearly 10%, and really more than I felt like riding at the time!
Still, at that point there wasn’t much choice, so I pedalled on, over it
The good news is that it’s still a beautiful part of the world, as the route moves away from the coast but into Royal National Park. The bad news is that the proceeds the most mentally cruel section of the route.
Approaching Sydney from the south you can virtually see the finish, straight ahead. And then the route turns left. Rather than taking the straight shot to the finish, there is still around 60km of looping around Sydney Harbour. You’ve left the beauty of Royal, you’re into a city that isn’t that much better than any other cities and having already ridden it once I knew that it was 60km mainly on bumpy little concrete paths.
It’s a funny thing, having ridden 5,400km across a country basically just for the sake of doing it, to look at the final 60km and wonder if you can be bothered. I knew it was perfectly possible to just go straight ahead – I’d seen it being done in previous editions. And really, who would care?
I wasn’t really seriously contemplating the shortcut, because I knew that at least one person who cared later on would be me – it just wouldn’t suit right. But before I had the chance to make that choice as a final decision, I saw a guy on a bike.
Ian had come out to great me and to ride in with me, and it was pretty obvious that the idea of me taking a shortcut hadn’t crossed his mind at all!
He turned out to be a nice bloke and good company, which made the thought of the next 60km less terrible, so I turned left and wondered how long he would stick with me. He was a good conversationalist and we actually had a lot in common professionally, but of course the conversation started focused on my ride until then. Thinking back on it, I hadn’t had any major problems. I had also been amazingly lucky with the weather. Yes, I’d had some terrible head winds, but despite the flooding that had happened across a lot of the country, I hadn’t really had any significant rain – just some gentle showers.
As we rode there were a lot of others who came out. Lots of people were standing along the route, several brought snacks and drinks, and a few rode with us for a while. Most of those I spoke to asked similar questions, and I repeated the same thing about the relative lack of rain. When Phil joined us we did, of course, have the same conversation. Phil was clearly an adept rider ready for a decent distance, and I thought that as long as the weather held I would almost certainly have company all the way in. And then I noticed the weather.
We basically all noticed it at once – the sky had turned black. We discussed a pause to get jackets as we rolled towards a traffic island in an intersection, spoting a handy sheltered spot up ahead. Unfortunately though, the traffic light was against us. The rain hit a we stood waiting for the lights, and within seconds we were drenched.
We all put on jackets anyway, but honestly by that time it was hardly worth the effort.
Still, there wasn’t far to go, and waiting for it to stop wasn’t going to help, so we all headed onwards. Except… I didn’t which way was onwards. I had had my frustrations with my garmin computer along the route, but it had basically behaved. Heavy rain though is, to it, like kryptonite would be to superman if he wasn’t that impressive most of the time. It went from being ok, to being less use than a chocolate teapot. It started flicking madly between screens until iI managed to lock it, at which point it immediately converted every useful bit of information with a “Right power sensor missing” error message.
I’ve actually heard that the new edge 840 has full buttons as well as a touchscreen, which might make it useful in situations like this, but for now I was just glad I also had my bolt there. A quick swap of navigation devices and we were on our way again.
As we crossed the bridge the rain actually slowed and then stopped – as I mentioned I don’t believe in fate and fickle gods, but it really did feel like it hasn’t wanted to rain, but just wanted to teach me a lesson for being so cocky as to say I hadn’t had bad rain!
The rain was done though, I still had an escort, and the opera house was right there. We rolled up through milling tourists and iI scanned the crowd. Suddenly I saw… a microphone!
Rupert Guinness, leading sport and cycling journalist turned ultra racer, was there to greet me, with a microphone and a whole lot of questions. It was great to see Rupe, he’s a great guy, and of course it’s always a little flattering to have a microphone shoved in your face after finishing, but it wasn’t top of my priorities.
As he asked me what the toughest bit had been there were plenty of options, but what came to mind was the bit that had been unusually easy. I had realised that the toughest bit of this style of racing for me is usually the first hour or so. Usually, when a race starts, I realise I’m leaving behind something I will sorely miss. This year, because of covid, iI hadn’t brought that something, or rather, someone, to the start with me. For most of the ride I had been riding towards her rather than away, and now I was looking for her. And then I saw her, my number one fan, wrapped in a cheap rain poncho of the kind you buy when you are waiting for something, and the heavens suddenly open. Life was great.
From there on everything was a bit of a blur. I was honoured enough to have several overlanders and overlanders in training there to meet me, including Rupert and the 2019 winner, Jacob “Plant Based Pedaller”. I suggested a celebratory drink was in order, so a bunch of us retired to the nearest bar for a beer and a bit of food. After that I stocked up on some food to get me through to the car, and then we picked up a bit of food for the drive home. My body was still in overdrive…
I basically sat and ate all the way from Sydney to Canberra, arriving home late in the evening to a great surprise.
The race was still going on, and I was still cheering for my friends on the road, but as far as riding went, my IndyPac was done.
I had come home first in a race across a continent. Sure, it was a reduced field, but there were still some quality riders and you can only race the guys who turn up. I had achieved something I had been trying for four many years. It seemed like a good time to quit – while I was ahead. I haven’t done a long road race since, I’ve struggled with a while lot of sickness and stress, and my training has just gone out the window, with my condition quickly following it. Even the last three off-road races I’ve started have ended with DNFs. It sure looks like I’ve quit. The truth is though, I still like doing it. It will take me years, from where I am now, to get back into good racing shape. Years of suffering and being slower than I want – watching everyone else disappear up the road while I simply don’t have the keys to follow. Common sense says that I shouldn’t think about a road race until around 2025. But on the other hand, I’ve always maintained that the best training you can get is racing…
Anyone wondering what the current ride is, its the Transiberica, which started an hour ago in Málaga. Unfortunately, he seems to be missing on the race tracker. He did start …
A good story Rowan, well told… congratulations!