A couple of weekends back, I headed to Victoria for the annual festival of uphill suffering known as the Three Peaks. For those unfamiliar with the event, what you’re essential looking at is a parcours comparible to a Tour de France mountain stage, over 235 kilometres of stunning Victorian Alpine roads, accompanied by nearly 1800 other riders, complete with road closures, medical and recovery services, feed stations, electronic timing and mechanical assistance, and, during the leadup, detailed training advice.
It’s rightly a Blue Riband event in Australian cycling, and indeed has made some global lists as a best-of-breed event. This is something I had to do.
So I signed up. Unfortunately, my preparations were a bit rocky. I picked up a few injuries in January and February, which drastically cut the amount of riding I was able to do, but nevertheless I kept to my original target time of under ten hours – ambitious, but not unachievable.
Of course, that was almost derailed the Friday before I left, when my Chief Financial Officer and unoffical Directeur Sportif (aka girlfriend) offered to buy me a new set of carbon handlebars if I broke 9:30, or a Stages Power Meter if I broke nine.
Game. on.
I’ve previously ridden 230km in under nine hours – solo – but on much less mountainous terrain. This time I’d be able to catch some aerodynamic advantage from groups in the flat sections, which would help, but the hills would take significant lumps of time and – more importantly – energy out of the equation. So ten hours was still realistic, but nine? It’d take something pretty damn special. The course record was well under eight hours, so we’re not talking about superhuman effort here, but all told, I had no idea if I could pull it off.
With all that in mind, I adapted and printed a handy ride plan included as part of the ride guide, and taped it to my top tube, including sector times for 10 hour and 9 hour targets. Then I packed up my kit for the weekend, including my nespresso machine and rice cooker, enough clothes for almost any condition, four inner tubes, two pairs of bike shoes, three pairs of gloves and everything else I could conceivably need and turned in for a few fitful hours sleep.
at 4am on Saturday morning, my alarm stirred me from what was only barely counted as sleep, and I got ready to hit the road.
By midday, I was in Bright and negotiating with my motel to give me an early checkin. The plan had originally been to arrive, take a short flattish ride to unwind, then head up to Falls Creek to check in. I modified that slightly. The time off the bike and out of the hills meant I had no benchmark for my climbing performance – which I expected to be fairly dismal. My genius solution to this? Ride up to the briefing in Falls Creek from Mount Beauty, then ride back down, fuel up and turn in.
So I did. The hill itself was a little tougher than I expected, and my legs weren’t feeling brilliant up hill. My HRM was also malfunctioning, so I was missing an important data point. Partway up I met a rider called Michael, who was ticking off the climb as part of the Seven Peaks challenge, and we rode together, staying out of the red, until the resort came into sight. I then gave it a bit of a kick and pulled away. As I entered the resort, I was greeted by some Sydney riders – the value of the club jersey paying off – who offered a brief chat and regaled me with tales of how hard the ride would be, before pointing me the right way for checkin.
Checkin done, I chilled out with a coffee for a while and consulted with the Garmin concession stand about my malfunctioning HRM strap. Looked like I had a flat battery. I had a battery but no small screwdrivers, and there was nothing in Falls Creek, so I opted to head back down to Bright and see if I could find a hardware store still open.
The descent of Falls Creek that followed was nothing less than superb. While my uphill performance had been pretty lacklustre, my downhill speed was more than satisfactory. I was feeling solid in the corners, well balanced and pretty much fearless. Despite being on a compact crankset, I could hold a high cadence in 50×11 and hit peaks of over 80km/h, and there was confidence aplenty, enough in fact to overtake cars. I got a good feel for the bends and mentally flagged a couple of potentially dangerous corners for the next day – with corrugated surfaces in the bend, hitting them at high speed on the wrong line would be nasty, but avoiding the corrugations is possible with a good line choice. The first 30kms of the event were going to be fast.
Back in Bright and my luck was out for hardware stores. I instead headed off to the Bright Brewery, where my friend Jon works, for a spot of food and a cheeky beer before turning in, with the hope I could maybe track down Jon and borrow a screwdriver. Well, there was no luck with that, and indeed the bar forgot my food order, so I had another beer while I waited. And another while I waited some more. Then, after an hour, my food arrived – as did a trio of Sydney riders who expressed fairly open skepticism that the slightly tipsy, dehydrated buffoon in front of them was considering a nine or ten hour target time. And it’s true. I was a bit tipsy. Still dehydrated from the ride earlier, three beers had pushed me from ‘relaxed’ to ‘frankly a bit drunk’, and the light beer I had in front of me wasn’t helping. Horror stories of being swept up by the broom wagon in 2013 were told, and I goggled slightly, because these guys were fit looking riders. One of them races B-Grade with me back in Sydney. I was nervous. And still in need of sobering up. We bade our farewells and I headed back to the motel to rehydrate and get myself back on track.
Which is where the pre-ride nerves set in for real. I slept, woke up again, ate food, drank water, slept a little more, woke up again, rummaged through my kit and found a small enough screwdriver to repair my HRM, went back to sleep, got up, went for a walk, did some stretching to try and soothe my still-present injuries, went back to bed and generally fretted the night away, unsure if I’d even make it the full distance, never mind crack a good time. Pictures of being overtaken by the Lanterne Rouge haunted me all night. By 3;30am I’d had enough. I got up, got dressed and headed for Falls Creek once more – this time under engine power.
By the time I arrived, the nerves were gone. I’d decided not to fret about the nine hour time and to stay focused on the ten, but to monitor my progress against the ride plan closely. If I could get through sectors one and two within the nine hour target, all well and good. If not, stick to the ten hour plan. I was pretty sure I could do the first descent inside the stretch target, but the climb of Tawonga Gap would be the real decider. MIlling around in the start zone, I spotted one of my clubmates from LACC, headed over to find some minor strength in numbers and got ready for the off. Time for action.
To be continued in part two…
