First day - Day one of two...

Dawn to Lunch - 72.3kms...

 
So, here we are, pedalling away on our bike to the first pit stop. Left the university at about 6.30am and pedalled out of BrisVegas via some very pretty suburbs, which reminded Carly of Melbourne - almost a tad 'Toorak' although... not quite. Out through to some busy roads, onto an interesting bike track that went over a river and then under a bridge and on to Sumners Road, Progress Rd, Ipswich Rd and on to our first pitstop. Not so bad... at this point. Rode through a couple of industrial sites and hit several 'rolling hills'. Hills that I enjoyed, I felt great, good strong run-ups, good run down the hills, some great speed, start pedalling at the bottom, put some sheer thigh strength into it (have you seen the size of Carly's thighs!) and climb up to the top of the hill. Wahoo! Heaps of fun. Then we hit some of the real stuff! More challenging hills, this is where we discovered that we probably needed to do more hill training, in fact, maybe we should have done some hill training... any hill training would have been better than the amount we did. If you could see me, you would see me shamefully hold my head down, whiskers dropped shamefully by my side as I tell you - we did no hill training... yep, none. So when we hit the first pit stop at 23kms, we were actually really happy to stop, despite having down further distances, the hills took much out of us. It took us about an hour and 23 minutes to do the distance. Carly was already complaining that it was unfair that we were not sharing the pedalling, not my fault my legs wouldn't reach the pedals!

Pit Stop 1 - somewhere between
Inala and Redbank Plains

First experience of trying to find our
bike, one of eight pit stops over the 2 days.

As you can see - most people were
 keen to stop at this point! - (Ash Elford)

Left Pit Stop 1 to head through Redbank Plains, past the cheering station at 42.16km - came zooming down a hill past cheering supporters and then pushed our way up a hill that any seasoned cyclist would find a breeze - I am sure that you have worked out by now that we are far from 'cyclist' let alone anything with seasoning!! But, despite the ride proving to be more challenging than we had expected, we had still not allowed ourselves to be swept. Stay away sweep vans! They had began to loop around the course like circling vultures - we got the distinct feeling that they were witnessing our pain and just waiting for our reserves and willpower to die! Not just yet! No sweep van for us. Not long past the cheering supporters (I just checked the map - 4.7k later), we hit Pit Stop 2 and it was surprisingly fast after the adrenalin kick of bells ringing, people screaming and signs proclaiming that we were all doing an 'Epic thing for Cancer research'. Hit Pit at 46.8km at 9.25am.

Pit Stop 2 - Ipswich



The Evil Pine Mountain Rd - actually taken on
Day 2 by Ash Elford - but you get the point!

Now came some of the real challenges! Between Ipswich and Ferndale Memorial Park, where we stopped for lunch, was one incrediably rough Pine Mountain Road. I'm sure I haven't yet mentioned to you my very 'wise' choice of steel water bottles. Although, between the two of us (that's me and Carly!), we were not aware that if we squeezed the biddon holders tighter, the constant noisy rattle of metal on metal while vibrating over some of the roughest roads we have ever witnessed would have been stopped.... so in the mean time, every person we rode near looked suspiciously to their right expecting a very old bike that was falling apart on the rough roads to pass on their right, not our gorgeous pink Giant Avail. I even had some well-meaning riders ask if everything was alright with the bike. We got to the point that as we came up behind a rider,Carly would holler 'Passing on the right, but I am sure you could hear us coming! It's alright, the bike isn't falling apart, it is the steel water bottles'. It wasn't until Day 2 (one the very same road!!) that someone said to me, 'Are those steel bottles driving you insane? Did you know you could just squeeze your holders tighter and it will stop that crazy noise?'

It was through this stage that our so-called 'bike service' really came into it's own. You see, in all her wiseness, Carly decided that it would be a really good idea to have the bike serviced the day before the ride, despite the fact that the bike seemed to be lovely before the service. This is one of those moments that Carly rarely has, it's not broken, so let's fix it anyway!! I guess you would say, it was a boy-moment.

On these more challenging hills, my gears were playing up really badly, so badly that Carly stopped talking to me and started talking to the bike. Not stuff that can be repeated on the blog, but definately to the bike and not to me! She would go to change gears to climb a hill and the bike would work through 2-3 gears and then not engage at all, then drop down through a number of gears all over again. She couldn't change through the three big cogs (yep, I hear cyclists groaning everywhere right now, I should know what they are called, but, sorry, I don't). The gears would just jam up altogether! Couldn't go up or down. So besides the legs being shot and the lungs suffering, the bike was not playing nicely with us, which made us consider tipping the bike upside down for a bike mechanic and a sweep vehicle! Yep, a sweep vehicle! So, Carly walked and I continued to hitch a ride. Each time we hit another hill, Carly would continue to try to struggle with both the gears and the hill, then we would see someone hop off their bike and start walking up the hill and that was it - Carly's head was done! The body would have probably coped a little longer, but the anger with the bike's misbehaviour and the head justifying walking over riding started to win out on each hill from this point forward. We finally reached the lunch stop at Ferndale Memorial Park at 11.20am. At this point, Carly took the bike directly to the mechanics and said some rather crude statements about the quality of the service she had paid for the day before and asked if there was anything that could be done about it before she found the nearest lake (or dam) to throw said bike into. Mechanics smiled, said 'more than happy to fix it, go have lunch and kick back for a little while and then head back to pick up your bike.' Smiles all round, music to our ears! Food and a serviced bike. Yay. Rather hungry after riding/walking 72.3kms.

Really well organised Lunch station!

I have to say, everything about this event was amazing! It was really well organised at the Pit Stops and at the Lunch Stop. We had Sweep Vultures everywhere, roaming bike mechanics to help sort out bike furbys, such as, replacing tyres, fixing cables, and all manner of things like replacing tyres, oh and apparently they replaced hundreds and hundreds of tyres!! Many a bike mechanic was going to suffer from very sore triceps due to DOMS from pumping up tyres all weekend.

Distance left after lunch
- so they told us!

After eating a hearty ham sandwich, Cadbury chocolate (snack size of course), juice pack, nuts and sultanas and an orange, we went back to the mechanics where they asked us if we had actually paid someone to service the bike?! They had to adjust most of the cables, adjust the derailer and do something or rather to some other things!! They were quite upset that someone had clearly done a very bad job of our service the day before and advised us that if we were to go back, it would only be to get our money back off them. This service cost us zip, zilch, zero, nothing! So grateful. I'll tell you more when I update our adventures of the last '46'kms to the campsite tomorrow.

Bikes everywhere!

One sock down, seven to go!

Meanwhile, I hope you are enjoying the blog and my huge Adventure - the Ride to Conquer Cancer. I am Cwa - Cat With Adventures, Cheshire Smiles to you all!