Tour de Timor: The First Day Is Over But Why Do I Feel Like This?

As I stood over the little hedge and vomited I was confused. I had ridden this far before, quite recently in fact. I had ridden in the heat. Why do I feel so sick? Another rider, I didn't know, came over to offer me water and asked if I needed anything. I tried to let him know I was alright in between wretches and thanked him for his water to at least rinse my mouth. I found a weird humour in that one of my main concerns was not that I was sick but I needed fluids and food to ride the next day. Deep down though I knew I was in a bit of trouble.

I think my mistake was made a few hours ago at the start of the race. Thousands of people lined the streets and it was easy to get caught up in the moment and, even if only in my mind, feel little of what Lance must feel. At one stage I saw up the road four blue jerseys that I thought I could latch on to so I dug a little deeper. When I caught them they turned out to be one of the UN teams, all very cut and tanned. It was right there that I had my chance to say ‘Easy, you cant ride with these guys, you’ll blow up’. Did I heed my advice….of course not, I sat on the wheel at 37kph and tried to find a rhythm. A few k’s down the road my legs told me I was doing the wrong thing so I dropped off.

Keeping me occupied was the need to avoid, jump, or ride through the countless potholes, no ‘pothole’ is not the right word, ‘missing pieces of road’ is more accurate. In a road race you spend your time either working on the front of a group in the wind or trying to avoid the wind by hiding behind someone’s wheel. This race was on the road but as there were so many hazards it was not the kind of terrain that allowed a rider to blindly follow a wheel. I was about eighth wheel and had no view ahead when I saw the lead rider ‘bunny hop’. Like a mexican wave the bunny hop approached me down the line of riders and all I could do was use the approaching wave to time my own hop to avoid the hazard that was not visible to me. As I lifted my wheels I saw the foot wide gap running the width of the road, I cleared it. That escape lifted my spirits even more as a crowd of children roared with delight at the manoeuvre.

Then not far from the start the first ‘hill’ appears. It’s a 300m vertical climb over about 5km and I ground my way to the top thinking ‘I may regret my choice of rear cassette’

After the ‘hill’ a catch another group and we ride really well together, calling out hazards “hole!!”….”big hole!!!”…….”goat!!!!!” etc. I am feeling great and during my turn on the front I am resting my elbows on the bars in time trail mode and feeling like I could ride like this all day. Wind forward four hours and I’m starting to feel some problems developing. The hills are starting to hurt and I’m thinking ‘I may regret my choice of rear cassette’. I stop at a stall and buy water and plug on. At about the 100km mark the real climb begins and I’m already knackered. This is a 500m (vertical) climb over 10km and it hurt alot. At one stage I just felt like it was a nice day for a walk. Actually I felt cramps in the calves coming on so I tried to stop them getting worse.

Some photos:

Tour de Timor

Where else would you keep your new MTB

But your lounge room :)

My new mountain bike is here

How exciting my new MTB (Giant XTC Advanced) is here. I pick it up tomorrow. Pity I have just done 137km on my roadie so I wont be going for too big of a test ride as my legs are a bit wobbly.

Tour de Timor

A few months ago someone told me about this event the Tour de Timor ....it's huge and I said that would be great...if I was fit. Anyway it's now three weeks out from the event and I've just ordered a new MTB a Giant XTC Advanced and booked some flights. I cant believe I'm doing this but it'll be a hoot. My only goal is to not be swept up by the sag wagon each day.

Tennent Creek Tour - The Outcome

As I said, if one keeps one's expectations low then one is never disappointed. So we drive for 11 hours to get there on the Friday. We swap drivers every hour or so and had some great laughs. We get there with the usual stiffness and lazy feeling when Andy bounds out of his van and says "What time for a ride?" We all look at each other and sigh. Anyway about a half hour later we're on the road checking out the course. It's a 20 something km out and back on some of the roughest road surface I've ridden on.

So the next day we have a 3.1km time trial which determines what grade you race in for the road race and the crit. I, not having ever been a time trialist am not worried about anything and confident of riding the 'C' grade road race of 40km in the afternoon. We race the race, I put in all I could and go back to the unit happy with my mediocre performance. The thing that was a bit weird was we didnt get to find out what grade you were in until the road race starts.

Aaron and I ride to the start of the road race and decide to take the back streets. Now Tennent Creek has had it's share of media attention regarding alcohol problems and as we went down the first back street we could see the whole street shimmer with broken glass. A quick 'yikes!!!' and we turn around and went on the main roads (very thin race tires and glass dont mix).

At the start the officials pin the results of the time trial and the subsequent gradings on the trailer and I am confused that I cant find my name in the 'C' grade list. Much to my horror I find myself in 'B' grade riding instead of a 40km race a 80km race!!!! This is not good news and thankfully Aaron made me put four Gu's in my pocket.

So I immediately went into defensive mode with the sole aim of not getting dropped and having to ride 80km on my own because: a) it's embarrassing and b) it's hard. We rode out and I took my turns on the front and Trevor (from Kunnunurra and riding for Darwin) and I noticed that no one wanted to do any work......it's going to be one of thoses races :)

Anyway I made sure I was on the front on the hills and the turn arounds but sheltered in the head wind and about half way I'm starting to feel that maybe if I hang on that if I'm in the bunch at the finish I might be able to give the sprint a nudge.

To cut a long story short I was about 10th wheel in the last km, Trevor and some bloke from Alice Springs were off the front by about 20m and I got boxed in but then about 200m to go a gap opened up and I thought 'go for it'. I rode past all riders and was gaining on Trevor but the line was too close and I got 3rd. I could not believe it!!!

I was very very excited about that and if you ever meet Aaron and Andy (who I shared the unit with) they will tell you that I didnt shutup about it :)

My crit was bloody terrible but I dont care I got a podium in the road race in 'B' grade!!!!

Top weekend and everyone was already planning next year.

Tennent Creek Barckly Agencies Tour

So I race twice at the new TDZ 20km handicap (replaces the old Secrett Rd event so popular for so long in Darwin) and get talked into going down to Tennent Ck to race a two day tour!!! Andy Barcroft is taking his work van down with the bikes and the rest in a few cars will go down on the Friday. There's a small prologue on Saturday morning followed by a road race in the afternoon. Sunday morning there is a criterium then BBQ lunch and we drive home.

What does this mean to me? Well I have 4 weeks to get some serious training miles in :) My motto for this event will be "If you keep your expectations low you will always succeed"

It was back to Plan 'A', The Kuranda Range

In a mad panic Mum rings me to tell me that there is some big festival up at Port Douglas on the day we were supposed to ride up to Port Douglas/Mossman and that 20,000 people are expected there on the Friday night. So it's back to riding up the Kuranda Range. Famous for it's traffic and lack of shoulders on the side of the road so we were a little nervous and as it turns out rightfully so.....it was crazy. We got off and walked a couple of times when we heard trucks approaching but it was so bad that there was hardly any room for that. Anyway the point of this post is, if you every get the urge to ride the Kuranda Range, dont do it at lunch time, maybe a dawn but not lunch time.

To make things a little more exciting Sandy had a bit of a tummy bug going on on the day we flew over. The sort of problem that makes you nervous if you are too far from 'facilities' if you know what I mean. She had tummy cramps, had no food and also dehydrated and put in a stoic effort to climb the range. She's a trooper.

At the top of the range with a big sigh of relief we found a caravan/camp park that was absolutely beautiful in the rain forest.