So I got to Bright on the Thursday and settled in. Cool town Bright is. Lots of cafes, microbreweries, restaurants, all of which is in a lovely bush setting.
Dave, Anita and Sara rolled in to town Thursday night. Reassembled the bikes that night (thankfully Jetstar hadn't done any significant damage to my machine). And we decided on doing a quick rail trail ride in the morning just to stretch the legs and shakedown the bikes before Saturday.
We punched out a easy 50 Km on the Friday morning. And I was feeling confident - the temperature was lovely and it was the easiest 50 I'd done for a few months. A pancake flat 50, but still 50. I was feeling bullish about Saturday.
We then thrashed out a simple plan for tactics, stops, ride nutrition, etc. It was coming together nicely.
That confidence though collapsed spectacularly around 5pm Friday. I was texting we few mates about the ride, how to track me via the app, my ride number, etc, and Foz came back to me and asked what I thought would be my likely times for the various timing checkpoints on the course. Reasonable question that I hadn't thought about. So I ran the numbers and quickly came to the realization that I was going to be riding for 13 hours plus. And that's if things went well. Fucking hell.
Now you could say "Well how long did you think it would take Greg?", but I'd been looking at the ride through the lens of kilometers not time on the bike. 200 Km didn't seem like a ridiculous step up. 13 hours certainly fucking did.
My anxiety levels went through the roof and stayed there. I don't think I got a wink of sleep that night. Literally. We were starting the ride at 4 am, and it was a relief when the alarm went off at 3. I didn't need to lie there worrying & trying to sleep any more.
"Ready" to roll out at the start:
So the starts of these large rides are often a little hairy, but the only starters at 4am were experienced people doing the 200 or 250. It was pretty smooth.
Hit the slopes of Mt Buffalo around 15 Km down the road. It's a very steady climb - sits at 5-6% gradient for pretty much the whole 20 kilometers (and you rack up 1000 m of vertical over the climb). Settled into my work, Dave chaperoning me the whole way (Anita & Sara had settled into their own rhythm). It was hard work. 5-6% doesn't sound too bad, but the 20 kilometers of it without respite made it tough. I'd kind of expected to go up Buffalo in a canter.
The sun came up about 2/3 the way up the climb, and I got to appreciate just how beautiful the country was. Loads of great views, imposing trees and highland meadows.
I ground my way to the top (Dingo Dell), stopping for a quick snack break and taking a quick pic with the posse (Anita & Sara were only a minute or 2 in front of us)
Smiles aside, I was feeling pretty damn sore already. I'd done 35 of the 200 and maybe 1/3 of the climbing. Surely I was no chance of finishing.
At least the ride back into Bright was largely descent. Now just as I'd never done a 20 Km climb, I'd never done a 20 Km descent, but I took it cautious and got to the bottom. I was passed by plenty of people on the descent, but it was all about staying upright. And it made for a cool pic:
Rolled back into Bright. A quick food stop, another iced coffee, a quick chamois cream top up, and we were off again. I was feeling a bit fresher. Maybe I could get up Hotham?
From Bright there's about 20 Km of ground to cover before you get to the base of Hotham. We jumped off the roads for that stretch and stuck to a newly laid rail trail. That was a super enjoyable 20 Km. Great surface, no cars, lots to look at and see. Great riding. But Mount Hotham loomed large.
Hotham. Brutal. Hits you with a hard slap to the face as soon as you set out (8%-ish), then doesn't really let up. My goal was to get to The Meg - a short steep (10-12%) chunk of the climb that's about 5 Km into the ascent where you cross from the West to the East side of the mountain - and I'd see what happened from there. It was starting to get pretty damn hot though, and the rail trail feelings seemed years ago. I needed to stop 3 times in 5 minutes. That signaled the end. I was spent. About 500 m shy of The Meg as it turned out. By that point I'd racked up 102 Km and 1900 m of vertical (over 5 hrs and 40 minutes).
I was going to roll down the descent back to the coffee shop and rest up before retracing my steps on the rail trail, but Dave was worried about leaving me to descend on my own (he was going to push on to try catch the girls) - I clearly wasn't travelling so well. One of the motorbike support guys stopped to check in on us, and he agreed to shadow me down to make sure I got there fine. One last pic and we went our separate ways.
Uneventful descent to Harrietville (which sits at the base of Hotham), but when we got to the coffee shop the fellow on the motorbike got me to go to the ambulance rather than grab a skinny flat white. Another sign that I clearly wasn't travelling so well. The ambos gave me a thorough once over (HR, blood pressure, blood sugar) and then sent me on my way, though they did say no more riding for today (I was a little tachycardic, but as I said, I did just try to ride up Mt Hotham).
So my Alpine Classic 2023 finished in an Ambulance. Not the finish I'd been hoping for, but I was really pleased on the day that I rode over a century and had a crack at Hotham. I could (perhaps should?) have dropped back to a shorter distance/easier ride even during the ride itself. Mt Buffalo is also the biggest climb I've ever done (by quite some margin)
I can also now better see the shortcomings in my training and skills that I'll need to address (if there will be any future attempts). Until you try a ride like this, you don't know what you don't know. I'll probably write a post along those lines in the next few days.
And yes, it was a Did Not Finish, but in spite of that it was an awesome few days with great friends in an awesome part of the world. And I feel like I laid it all out there.
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