Colville Connection 2013

Sunset. Firth of Thames,
 Coromandel, New Zealand

Setting up my tent at 10 o'clock at night in the middle of a paddock was not my idea of a good lead-in to a bike race.  The flies were buzzing my ears and biting my hands.  Probably because I had unwittingly trodden all through their dinner and covered a good chunk of their dessert with the floor of my tent.

I'd driven up from Hamilton earlier that night with the aim of picking up my registration pack before setting up camp.  I arrived at Colville school in the pitch black darkness.  As I got out of the car, something caught my eye and I looked up.  The sky was smeared with stars laid out before me like those pictures you see at an observatory.  It wasn't just a few twinkly stars like we see above the city sky at night - the whole sky was spray painted with stars.  This beautiful country we live in, moment #1.

Realising that the school was all in darkness and there was no one around, I got back in the car and headed to my salubrious accommodations.  That's right, the poo-covered paddock.  White Star Station was close, cheap, and had heaps of sites left.  I did a couple of laps of the paddocks in my car, looking for the best spot before I found a suitable patch to make my own.

With the tent up, I quickly unloaded my bedding into the tent, zipping it up between each load to keep the flies and mozzies out.  I'd bought every sleeping mat I owned with me, 3 in total.  And stacking them one atop the other, I ended up with about 100mm of padding between me and the poop.  This was my first line of defence against waking up with a painfully sore hip (injured mid 2012 and still not "fixed").  I wriggled into my sleeping bag, stuffed my ear plugs in my ears and tried my best to sleep.  I wasn't sure if I was better to have slept in my own bed at home and driven up on race morning (at about 5am), or to camp out and hope I'd get a couple more hours sleep in.

When I woke up, I knew I'd done the right thing.  I'd taken a while to drift off to sleep and remembered waking up to turn over or adjust my sleeping bag a couple of times, but looking at the clock saying 6:05am it was almost perfect timing.

I got to the school quite early, nabbing a primo carpark right beside the school gate.  It didn't appear to be reserved for anyone but me.  I had plenty of time to register, discover that my bike had to be sprayed for Kauri dieback disease, assemble my bike and get it sprayed, return to registration, cut down my number plate to fit my bars, eat breakfast #1, set up my bike, fill up my bottles, get kitted up, apply sunscreen, drink breakfast #2, and then realise: "oh shit, it's time to line up!"

Out on the road, I had no idea how far back I was from the start line.  There was an ambulance in front of me blocking my view.  The ambulance moved off, but I wasn't tall enough to see how many riders were in front of me.  Next I knew a hooter went off and people started moving.  This is it! I started my computer as I rolled forward with the group, wondering if I should wait until I passed over the timing mat.  There was no timing mat.

The pace slowly increased as the group thinned out along the road.  Some people took off, others cruised.  I rode at a comfortable pace, passing a few people, spinning an easy gear in an effort to warm up my legs a bit  before we got into the hills.

I was pleased to get into the first hill, as I found most people slowed dramatically and I just kept my pace up as best I could.  I wouldn't usually be happy to be amongst hills, but I think this is where my bike was a big advantage for me - I had less weight to haul up the hills, less drag from my tyres, and no option but to keep on top of my 34:28 compact road gearing.  And the downhills were damned good fun too.  I had a bit of a disadvantage with my 'cross tyres getting a little more squirrelly through the looser corners, but I managed to keep things in check and not slide off the side of the road.

I caught and passed two guys on cyclocross bikes, both of whom were running triple chainring cranksets.  I started to doubt my decision at that point, wondering what was coming up.  While climbing or descending, I'd catch glimpses of the huge countryside around me, or snapshot of the ocean down between some trees.  As tempted as I was, I didn't stop for a photo.  I felt privileged to be riding in this special place on such a perfect day.  I took a deep breath and carried on. This beautiful country we live in, moments #2-27.

It was the road out of Sandy Bay that got the better of me.  I couldn't keep on top of my easiest gear and I reached the point where the effort on my legs and body to muscle my bike up the hill just wasn't worth it.  Mountain bikes crawled past me in granny gear.  I took a strategic walk for a few hundred metres until the gradient relaxed a little.  One of the 'cross riders snuck back past me.

I knew I had done enough hilly rides to be able to cope with the length and gradient of these hills - most of which were about 3km long and only a couple of hundred metres high (my training rides were on 10km long hills of about 500m elevation, though perhaps lacking in short steep pitches like the roads on the Coromandel).  I was very pleased I'd done those rides.  That was where I honed my gravel riding skills, learning how my bike moved over corrugations in downhill corners and how to cope with them when going uphill too, what amount of 'drift' I could handle before it became an out of control slide, and how sometimes you had to ride sideways through cambered uphill turns to maintain a straight-ish trajectory!

My main fear for this ride was of the riders around me and how they might behave, thinking that surely riding in a bunch on gravel would result in me being crashed into or taken down somehow?  For the most part the riders were great and I only had a couple of people go past me too close - I was on a very skinny bike and they still brushed my elbow!  They had the whole width of road to choose a suitable passing line, but I guess they were in "race" mode.  I'm fairly certain I passed both of those people on a hill climb later on anyway.

By the time I got to Stony Bay, my legs were feeling pretty good.  The strategic walk had helped wonders with a little mid-ride stretch.  With the singletrack section ahead of me I figured quite a bit more walking would be required.  Well, I surprised myself and was able to grind away slowly in my 34:28 up the singletrack section over Henry's Hill following the mountain bikes spinning their easy gears.  I was a bit held up and would have liked to have gone a bit faster, but because the trail was punctured with the odd rock I decided that sitting in behind and following someone else would stop me from overdoing it and crashing, or even worse, getting a pinch flat on a rock.

I rode through most of the singletrack, getting off for the occasional traffic jam in the rocky corners and at the top of the hill to let the "dudes with disc brakes" go first down the descent.  I needn't have worried.  I stuck to the back of the group on the descent, partially because of my awesome descending skills and partially because of my weak cantilever brakes.  Ok, mostly because of the brakes.

As I rounded another loose switchback, I noticed the corners were getting much more marbelly and the descent was getting steeper.  Those mountain bikers were finally getting away from me.  I gained speed quickly along the straight and thought, I'd better try to stop before I crash. Then, I crashed.  Thankfully, I crashed towards the bank (not the drop-off on the other side), bumping along it with my hip and elbow. That's the aforementioned dodgy hip, but luckily for me there was minimal damage to me and my bike.

I remembered the quote that was printed inside the rear pocket of my jersey:

If everything seems under control, you're just not going fast enough.
- Mario Andretti

I must have had the speed : control ratio set a bit close to the limit on that last descent.  I walked the next few switchbacks until the marbles stopped rolling out from under my tyres and I could resume riding.  The downhills were killer.  My hands and shoulders took the brunt of the impacts, though I did my best to let the bike flow over the rough stuff and let gravity and momentum work in my favour.  Not easy when it's hard to hold your head steady to look for good lines!  I made it down and started to feel like I was doing okay.  Not dead yet.

The bays were amazing.  I really needed some of those crazy Google glasses to capture what I could see. This beautiful country we live in, moments #28-49.

Views like this, and better, all over the place

The next thing I was staring at was a steep uphill grade.  Time for a walk.  Everyone was off and pushing their bikes.  I could have jogged up here.  Could. My bike was so light I had no trouble pushing it up the hill and over the rocks with one hand while I ate and drank with my free hand.  I concentrated on power walking, eating, drinking, and breathing to help recover as best as I could.

The track levelled off a bit and I jumped back on the bike.  It was good to be pedalling again.  I was dreading the descent into Fletcher Bay, but I needn't have worried too much.  The descent was on grassy track, so traction was pretty good, although it was pretty rutted with sheep tracks.  I was paying full attention to picking my lines and trying to stay smooth over the bumps.  Another mountain biker came by with some words of encouragement, "you're doing well... bloody well!"  One last grunt over a hill and I was finally in Fletcher Bay.

This was a  milestone - a bit over halfway, a food and water stop, and the end of the majority of the hills.  I refilled my water bottles and dropped a Nuun tablet into each one.  I'd decided to carry three bottles, assuming that I'd need all three to get this far.  So far I'd only drunk two, so still had my third one stowed in my jersey pocket as back up.

That's it, I'm on my way home, I thought as I re-mounted my bike and pedalled off around the corner... and straight into a steep climb.  My legs folded beneath me and I had no gas to get up this one.  Back off for another, more embarrassing  strategic walk.  A few people passed me before I could hop back on and pedal my way past them again.  When I was riding, I was going well.  The light bike and slightly higher gearing was pretty good.

I knew not to get lulled into a false sense of security that there weren't many hills on the return leg, or that it was mostly flat.  I was buoyed by a slight tail wind, or shall we say breeze, on the road past Port Jackson.  My buoyed-ness was short-lived as I soon found myself grunting up another steep hill (still on the bike) and getting pushed back by a distinct head wind.  Curses.

I had pretty much run out of climbing legs and found myself tuning out of my current situation.  I was day-dreaming about all sorts of nonsense on the climbs, with the song Another Round stuck in my head.  It seemed to do the trick of comfortably pacing me up the climbs.  I was also looking at my watch, almost in disbelief, and hoping I could get back as close to 4 hours as possible.  My goal had been to get back in under 6 hours - I really had no idea what sort of fitness I had, nor what the course would be like on my cross bike - and hoped that I would be in time to get a mussel fritter before they ran out.

Hope turned to despair as I hit the corrugations.  Relentless corrugations.  Tired arms, shoulders, neck, back.  Everything hurt like hell and was taking a beating from the vibrations.  I had no option but to keep going as quickly as possible in order to minimise the time that I would have to endure this punishment.  It was a bit of a mental battle to keep the pedal to the metal.  I rode down the middle of the road, thinking it was the smoother line.  Then I would see that the left hand side looked smoother and cross over the corrugations to get to that side.  After a moment of riding along the left and feeling the same degree of punishment, I would consider that the centre of the road looked to be the smoother line.  And back over I would go, crossing those corrugations again.  I repeated this pattern along the road, spending a lot of my time crossing  over the corrugations to find that the apparently smoother surface was much the same.  Oh, but that line on the right looks even better... buzzzzZZZ!

It was with some dismay that I finally happened upon the road works site I had been warned about as I left Fletcher Bay.  The road was freshly graded, rolled and sodden wet from the water truck.  The corrugations had ended, but the nightmare had not.  The top surface was slushy and slow... like riding through paste.  It flicked up onto the bike, drivetrain, my legs, face, and mouth.  It also meant that I had no idea where the smooth line was underneath.  What looked like a hard smooth section ended up being thick with slush and rough underneath.  And that headwind was increasing in strength.

It was through this section that I saw the first photographer of the day.  He was set up with a perfect backdrop of a teetering pohutakawa tree, green-blue ocean, vivid blue sky and a couple of wistful toi toi.  This beautiful country we live in, moment #50.  I gave him a surprise as I rounded the corner, the stealthy approach of my skinny tyres on the wet road didn't give him much warning, and he smooshed the camera against his face and fired off some shots.  I figured he wouldn't have got a very good shot, but the result wasn't too bad at all.

Grinning and bearing it

More slush, more headwind and more effort required to keep going.  I plucked the last bit of Ems bar out from under the leg of my shorts and scoffed it.  I'd opted to tuck my food under the leg of my shorts instead of trying to put it back into the rear pocket of my jersey and risking fumbling and probably dropping the bar.  This meant I could stow the food and quickly grab the bar if things got sketchy (which it did, multiple times).  I dubbed the lump my "multi-sport tumour".  Thankfully, it's not visible in the photo.

Going up one last hill, I checked my computer and realised it was the second to last hill; we still had one hill to go.  I was getting excited to be nearing the finish and put a bit of a burst of speed on.  Then I became aware of the grinding noise from the drivetrain and decided that a quick wash down with my spare bottle was in order.  I had no chain lube, by figured that I could survive the last 5 or 6km with Nuun drink as lube.  I quickly got under way again and relished the silent running of my chain and the small mental boost to know there was less friction working against me.

I saw the last last hill coming up, tore into a gel and gulped it down.  And choked.  I tried my best to clear my windpipe of the minuscule little glob of gel tickling the side of it, but no avail.  I started to hyperventilate and knew I had to stop - I couldn't maintain  pedalling and get my breathing under control.  As soon as I stopped, my breathing settled down and I cleared my throat.  A few swigs of drink and I was ready to go. I got stuck into that last hill and tried to tear my own legs off all the way to the finish.

I was done and a little stunned and bewildered.  I wondered how I managed to get round in a time of 4:20:something, a solid mid-pack finish.  As far as I knew, my fitness was like my tan lines - barely discernible.  My build up hadn't been great, with about 40km of commuting each week, with one longer ride (50km max) on the weekend and not every week - just 4 longer rides in the six weeks prior.  My rides had been pretty specific, keeping to gravel roads and big hills where possible, but I was still stunned at the outcome.  Special credit has to go to my bike, the wonderful Ritchey Sleigh, for being light, fast, and faultless.  And further special credit to the incredible weather conditions.  Colville was dry, hot and the roads were in pretty good condition. The trails were in fabulous condition.  Had it rained, there would be an entirely different story here.

I was pretty knackered at the finish, but did my best to talk to a few friendly faces that jumped out of the crowd and then recouped a little with a beer and a mussel fritter.  A quick wash and a change and I got to sit in the sun for an hour or so before prizegiving was held (and it was over in the blink of an eye - no spotties for me this time).  The drive back to Hamilton was run-of-the-mill, eating and drinking all the way, stopping for a couple of photos and looking forward to being with the family again.

Later that night as I lay in bed trying to drift off to sleep, I woke up as I felt my body shudder with the buuuzzzzz like I was still riding over the corrugated road - I guess that's like the swaying feeling you get after you've been on a boat all day?  It felt pretty strange and meant it took me even longer to go to sleep.

Clean up time.  Where's my staff?