April Animation

This ride hadn't originally been in my plans. Having ridden the 200k and 300k parts of the "super series" earlier in the year, the plan was to fix up the 400k in Toowoomba last month. A crash and a severed wire in a headlight ruined those plans, and with the next big ride being a 600k over the first weekend of May, I needed something in between to maintain the confidence to handle the big distances and keep a rhythm going. It was for that reason that I got the train to Banyo on Saturday morning and lined up at the start.

This ride started the same way a lot of others of this kind do -- me trying to foot it with the fast group and being left behind early on. Fortunately I'm comfortable riding solo as it gives me the chance to ride my own event and focus on what I need to do to complete it. The first checkpoint came after a lumpy 49km or so at Dayboro, and a very good bakery. It was after this that the real ride would start with the climb of Mt Mee. Recently on most of my climbs I've been methodical rather than powerful, and this was the same. I turned it over comfortably without ever really putting the hammer down, sometimes I just want to enjoy the switchbacks rather than try to mess it up.



Riding across the range welcomed me to cool air and sweeping views in all directions. Mt Mee is one where you can never really be sure the summit has been reached until the final descent on the other side. That descent is a bad time for a person to remember that they left the brown underpants at home. There are still plenty of switchbacks, but the gradient on the north side is much steeper than that on the south (having climbed it as well, I know). I'm fairly confident on the mountain descents these days, and I zoomed down. The next was an out and back stretch along the Neurum road toward Kilcoy, where the second checkpoint was located.



This is a pleasant enough road, but riding it twice takes some of the excitement away. The most intersting thing was an old Werris Creek boy like myself bumping into an old Tamworth boy at the second checkpoint (look them up on a map). He was wondering if I've "gotten over" having grown up in Werris Creek.

After returning from Kilcoy the next stretch was a long stretch toward Peachester. Long, because the wind was coming in almost directly from the East by this point. I knew there was a climb here, and I was relieved to find it (along the way passing a fully loaded cycle tourist, just to make me jealous). The sign said it was 1.8km at 10% -- I fancy the gradient was a little less than that -- or perhaps I'm just getting stronger after all. Peachester was reached with it's sweeping views over the Glasshouse Mountains, but those would have to wait. I still had to detour toward the Sunshine Coast first.

Before then I had to backtrack after taking a wrong turn out of Beerwah. The route slip had said "head for Landsborough", which I did on the road that had a sign directing me to Landsborough. Little did I realise that there was another road from Beerwah to Landsborough, and that was the one I was supposed to be on. It didn't take long to realise I'd taken a wrong turn, but finding my way back was a little more difficult and time consuming.



After getting back on the right road, I passed Ewan Maddock Dam and found another checkpoint. I had actually stopped for a Subway snack at Beerwah -- figuring that I'd get more here than at the next checkpoint at a service station. I then returned to Beerwah on the same route, before lining up the final assault. I'd have the job of riding straight south through the Glasshouse Mountains on sunset (a surprisingly flat route), before picking my way through the northern suburbs of Brisbane in the darkness.



The second part of that equation proved probably more difficult -- as I'd never been to Redcliffe before. Along the way I'd passed a group of hoons milling around on the side of the road. The road itself was black with tyre marks, and there was a heap of smoke in the air -- smelling of rubber. They were all milling around as if something had gone horribly wrong, but I wasn't sticking around to find out what.

After passing through the final checkpoint at Morayfield, it was now a matter of finding my way to Deception Bay, Redcliffe and back. I quite enjoyed this stretch, just cruising along Moreton Bay with the scent of the ocean always nearby. I would have liked my first visit to Redcliffe to be accompanied by daylight, but it wasn't to be.

It was pleasant all the same, but by this stage I was getting a little tired. There are a few aches and pains that arrive after 300km in the saddle -- especially if the saddle itself is almost ready to be pensioned off. After getting off the Peninsula, I put the hammer down and finished the ride a little faster. I'm not sure exactly what the time was, but I still had around 4-5 hours to spare on the time limit.

The next of these rides planned is the 600k in the first weekend of May, then there is another in the last weekend of May -- I'll probably select the 400k that day. It may seem odd to do the 600k before the 400k, but on this occasion, the first weekend just happens to be a long weekend in Queensland, and I might need the extra day to recover for work. In the meantime, I need to keep the long rides going -- I'll probably look for consecutive century rides this weekend.