A long day

The weekend just passed was the annual Brisbane to Gold Coast.  This is a 100k mass group ride with pretty big groups. 

There are some cool sections in the race like being able to make use of the city busways.  Riding these super smooth shortcuts through the city and out to near Logan is a great novelty.  The downside, at least for me, is the 5:15am kickoff.   

So at 4:40 last Saturday morning I left home and rode to the start at Southbank.  The 100k was a great ride and was a pretty high effort session through to Southport on the Gold Coast.  A ride time of 2:42 for an average speed of 37k was pretty satisfying with a few hills on the way.  With the start time being so early the temperature was only 16 deg but by the time I was done it was near 30 deg.

Once I had passed through the finish it was over to the nearest café for bacon and eggs, two strong long blacks and then back on the bike again to ride home.  The course down is not a straight line with a couple of decent ‘detours’ included to crack the 100k mark.  This meant the ride back without the extra bits was another 80k completed with a group I met on the way.  It was a beautiful day by then and the pace was just a pretty cruisy 28kph .  So the total for the day was just on 190k which is great because that is more than the race distance of 180k.  Although I doubt I’ll get bacon & eggs down during the race.  The other factor that was pleasing to get a good result on was the nutrition aspect on the bike.  At the end of the days riding I wasn’t overly dehydrated or depleted.  After the ride with the magpie attack a couple of weeks ago it was important to resolve this.

During the week I also entered the Taupo Half Ironman (http://www.halfironmantaupo.co.nz/) which is held on the 10^th of December.  Now I have done a half ironman before, the fact that it was 20+ years ago has done nothing to diminish the memories.  It was a pretty tough day back then, but I had only decided to enter 6 weeks before the race.  This time I know I will be much better prepared, but probably still substantially slower.  The great thing about doing this race as a lead up is that it is run over essentially the same course which just helps with the familiarisation.  Now to do some planning.