The first century

It's perhaps astonishing, but it took me until January 31 to ride my first real century of the year. Some would argue that Tuesday's epic at Lamington National Park, which included both a metric century and a 23km hike in the mountains was more physically difficult, but riding 100 miles (or 161km) is a completely different achievement. On the other hand, I need to get cracking if I'm going to complete the 25 I was planning to ride this year.



The plan on Sunday was just to ride a Tweed Valley circuit, a slight variation on the route that was my first ever century a little over 10 years ago. The weather forecast offered strong winds and occasional rain, but more importantly, the temperature was only expected to reach 28 degrees C. In fact, it hit 29 near Tyalgum, but that was still the first day not to break 30 around here since about August 15. I opened with a decent climb on Tomewin instead of finishing that way -- I figured I could shelter from the southerly wind early and catch a ride home on a tailwind. That would prove to be a mistake.



Somehow I managed to miss the rain for most of the day -- it seemed that the rain had just stopped everywhere I went, meaning that I had to negotiate wet roads without having the pleasure of being drenched. I made the one big mistake of the day's ride when I left the first food stop at Uki without refilling the water bottles. Fortunately Tyalgum was only 30km away, but that 30km did include the bulk of the day's dirt roads as well as some decent hills. To combat this I rode through the biggest puddle I could find as soon as I realised it, and the drenching my feet got managed to keep me cool for most of the ride.





The ride through the forest to Tyalgum, and then over the hills from Tyalgum obscured the fact that the wind had now swung around from the North, meaning I was going to get hammered both ways today. In reality it just meant the ride would take a little longer to finish, but over the last two years it's been almost impossible to finish a ride with a southerly wind -- irrespective of what the wind is doing every other day of the week. I did get some protection riding home through the rainforest of Urliup, but I knew it would be on after Bilambil.

I took an unscheduled stop for some more food and drinks, before decided to take the wind head-on for the last 25km of the ride. I'm still not sure where the power for that attack came from, but it seemed to work. In fact, it worked so well that the wind swung around again, and actually gave me a tailwind for the last 5km. It doesn't mean a thing I know, but at least it was something. All in all it was another rewarding day, and if the "cool" weather continues, I might make a few more of them happen.