-- Goose cooked in stop-start affair dogged by lazy ozzies and butt cream marketers
Wilson reports:
The boys assembled in Melbourne a few days early to acclimatise and find our way round.
The climate had us doing a quick rekkie of the bike shops for additional layers of clothing.
Saturday 6am was 4C with a howling westerly and rain.
Sunday was a bit warmer at 9C and luckily not raining.
We joined the mass start at 6am (16,500 riders).
The difference between a ride and a race was very evident.
After 15 minutes the boys led by Mcgechie made our own pace and built a small peleton moving at reasonable pace (given we had 2 x 110km to do).
The first bit of leg 1 west then south to Geelong was pretty dull…traffic lights, industrial, freeway along flat landscape in the dark.
The landscape improved as we got south becoming rural / seaside – still not a lot to see.
Meanwhile the pace increased as we fanged along the country roads towards Queenscliff with some assistance from the wind, arriving around 9:30am.
Received a good 15 min shower of rain at 9am.
It got fairly cold waiting for the 10am ferry but we warmed quickly inside with lunch and lollies.
On the Sorrento side we got away slowly again around 11am in sunshine.
Not long though before McG picked up the pace and we fanged past many an Aussie (made up for the CWG!) at a great clip with tailwind.
“Where is Lunn Ave?”
McK replied “it’s an exclusive Auckland invitation-only cycle club” and charged up the road, the first of many such 2nd leg attacks led by the gnarly Glaswegian.
20 mins later we passed LABC International debutante Peter Hall’s group (minus Peter Hall – another story partly told already).
We rode with them for about an hour and wound around the much prettier coastline and over the days “CLIMBS”.
CLIMBS = 2km at 4% for 60m gain and 5km ~2% for ~50m gain.
Still a good downhill and McGechie off again…the start of a good push into an increasing headwind the rest of the way home with the 3 of us rotating the lead on the front followed by, you got it Aussies!
Into Alexandra Gardens at 2pm.
All in all a decent ride and a good way to take in Port Phillip Bay.
Mixed with plenty of nutrition and hydration with the other-halves made for a decent riding excursion even if the historical significance was lost.
Additional reporting by McGechie:
What Brett fails to mention is the huge amount of work he did over the last 30k or so. I had pretty much cooked my goose after doing a bit of leading out earlier and had run out of fluids,…the headwind was howling but both John Mck AND Brett were made of sterner stuff. Legends.
Interesting part also was the amount of work done on the front by Lunnsters throughout the day and the complete lack of support by our Australian cousins,…..they just would not come through for a turn.
Amazing start in the dark,….think of all those flashing lights on bikes ie 16,000 of them.
As Brett mentions we were somewhat thwarted (both leaving and coming back into Melbourne) by the lack of road closures, traffic marshals and the insistence by the organisers that you must obey all road rules, ie stop at red lights and Give Ways etc. It made for some very stop start progress at times.
Another observation,…travelling internationally with a bike is reasonably straightfwd providing you have a good bike bag and that your bike is well packed in aforementioned bag. The bikes seemed to turn up in the oversize luggage reclaim areas well before our suitcases.
