My Mt Lofty Challenge ride

The Velo Adelaide Mt Lofty Challenge was a community bike ride starting in Adelaide, heading up the South Eastern Freeway to Mt Lofty, before winding its way through the Adelaide Hills and heading back to the CBD through the north eastern suburbs. There was a choice of three distances 50, 80 or 110km – I decided the 80km ride would be enough of a challenge at my current level of fitness.

The day began with a rider briefing. I stood there leaning on my bike, listening to Bike SA and SAPOL people going through the dos and don’ts, sucking on a protein gel and feeling a little pensive about the challenge ahead. I was trying to quell my self-doubts about the ride but the little voices persisted.

First on the list was my concern about whether I could complete the ride. Had I prepared enough? I’d been climbing hills for past three weeks but I hadn’t really done much other training. The first week I went up and down the four mighty pillars of Adelaide’s southern hills face zone (Cement Hill, the  Veloway, South Road and Flagstaff Road), the second and third weeks I climbed up to the Lofty summit. The Mt Lofty Challenge route profile said it was 1210m of climbing - the most I’d ever done in one ride was 780m. The distance wasn’t an issue - I’ve done 80km before but I was more concerned about the climbing. I knew what to expect from the Lofty climb but what about that ascent from Verdun back to Summertown? It didn’t look that severe but will it be too much for my commuter cyclist legs? Over the past month I’ve started to quite enjoy the hills (thanks in part, to adding a 30 teeth ‘granny gear’ to my rear cluster so I can actually get up hills without stopping), but I wouldn’t say my legs are in any way conditioned to it.

Would I cramp up like I did on the Veloway a few months back? (Mind you, I had ridden 70km on a 39 degree day which, in hindsight, wasn’t really that clever). What about my lower back? It normally starts to ache after the first 10km or so – I can put up with it okay but would the extra climbing push the pain into the red zone. And then there’s this fuzzy head and blocked sinuses that I’ve woken up with! The neurotic chatter between my ears was starting to sound like Woody Allen, or worse still, that irritating woman from Offspring.

However, in amongst all those self-doubts there’s a great sense of occasion and the excitement of being part of big community event like this. And overriding all of this is a strong determination to actually do it. I’ve made a fairly big thing of this event because, for me, this is much more than just a charity bike ride. It’s culmination of a two year cycling led reclaiming of my health and fitness. I spent 30 years tethered to my tobacco, feeling no real force of will to do anything about it. Cycling eventually broke the tether. I cycled and smoked for a year or so but when I started doing longer and steeper rides, giving up became an imperative. I enjoyed smoking, but I loved riding my bike more. Clearly they couldn’t co-exist in my life and since January 2011, they haven’t. Not that it was quite as simple as that, but in the end it wasn’t as hard as I thought it would be.

So getting healthy and quitting smoking really just happened by accident. I’ve never done much physical activity nor had any real interest in exercising, running or going to the gym. But the whole cycling experience has just clicked with me. The health and fitness benefits have been a fortunate consequence of that experience. And I only took it up a couple of years ago because I wanted to get the kids out of the house and doing something active. Thanks kids!

For me, one of my strategies for giving up smoking was to tell everyone about it. Avoiding the humiliation of trying and failing was a big motivation for me. A similar thing happened with the ride. I decided to put it out there a bit by setting up the fundraising website for the Smith Family a few days before the ride. They do great work - there are few nobler causes than giving kids opportunities that they wouldn’t normally have had (through no fault of their own). Lots of generous donations came in from family, friends and colleagues which proved to be a great motivator. The biggest motivation came on Sunday morning before the ride when I checked the site and found that an extraordinarily generous anonymous donor had sponsored me for $100 and left a really encouraging comment. So, any doubts I may have had, any thoughts of taking the escape route or turning left after Mt Lofty and doing the 50km ride instead of the 80, were now irrelevant. If people are prepared to put all that money down for a great cause because they believed I could do it, there’s simply no option. Just shut up and get on with it …. In the end, I raised $307 which put me in 40th place on the fundraising list, which is a good thing.

Riding through the Heysen Tunnel

With the rider briefing over, we took off and headed up Glen Osmond to the Tollgate under a painfully slow police escort (it seemed to be about 12km/h most of the way). The sight of thousands of bikes stretching out along the road ahead of me was extraordinary. Also impressive was the diversity of bikes – it was mostly roadies but there was also loads of hybrids, flat bars and mountain bikes, a few tandems, kids pedalling furiously on those tag along things and there was even a few sadists on single speeds.

The ride up the freeway was okay but the headwind didn’t help. I did find the freeway a little bit monotonous - I prefer the bike path/Mt Barker Road route to Crafers. It has steeper climbs but there are more flat bits between them (and the scenery is better). Anyway, the company was good – I had some nice chats to a few people on the way up. There seems to be a great camaraderie and support in these big rides, especially in the back half of the bunch where the riding is  less intense. The tunnel was interesting - there was a DJ at the far end with a couple of girls dancing away. Riding through the tunnel with the music pumping and bouncing off the walls at 9 on a Sunday morning was a slightly odd experience.

That’s me leading an audacious breakaway just after the tunnel exit. In the elite group behind is Peter ‘one lung’ McDonald, Clive (out on day release from the nursing home), Stevo (lost his left leg in Vietnam), Enid (73 and still going strong) and little 8 year old Jake on a BMX.

I stopped for a quick drink at Crafers and headed up to Mount Lofty. Having ridden up to the summit the past two weekends I knew what to expect and I’m starting rather enjoy this part of the climb. The road was closed to traffic so it was a nice ride up there with no cars to worry about. The nasty little spike just before the first TV tower is a killer but it’s not quite so bad if you get a decent run up on the downhill bit before it. Feeling pretty pleased to have knocked off the first stage with relative ease, I celebrated with a hot cross bun and a banana at the feed station (whoo, go crazy…). I was also pleased that my head was now feeling significantly clearer and all those doubts that occupied my mind at the start line were disappearing.

Mt Lofty feed station

Heading off into the shade of summit road I enjoyed the cool breeze and the easy spinning of the decent, then onto the road through to Summertown and Uraidla. The descending highlight of the ride was the run from Carey Gully down towards Balhannah. It’s a nice smooth road with lovely fast bends with good visibility. For a few kilometres before the decent I’d been following a woman who looked about 4’ 8”, quite stocky with big thighs and calves. Anyway she fanged it when the downhill bit started – I kept up with her for a minute or so but she was too fast for me and cleared off.  The descent was a blast. I got to my ‘terminal velocity’ of 68km/h. I can never seem go any faster than that – partly because I’ve set my bike up with gearing that helps me climb hills rather than descend them, partly because of the limited strength in my legs. After all that excitement I needed a wee, a banana and a drink top up at the particularly well organised feed station at Verdun.

The route map from Verdun back to Summertown showed that the route was quite hilly. On the profile the climbing didn’t look anywhere near as significant as the Tollgate to Lofty climb, but in reality I found the hills around Bridgewater (henceforth known as the Bastard Hills of Bridgewater) to be pretty tough going. The first on the list was the Germantown Hill climb between Verdun and Bridgewater (this was a King of the Mountain climb from the Tour Down Under a couple of years ago). It was hard yakka but I reached the top okay. I said good morning to group of people watching proceedings at the top of the hill who responded with “well done” which was very kind and seemed to make the effort worthwhile.

I trundled through Bridgewater full of warm fuzzies, oblivious to the pain that was just around the corner. The particular corner in question was the left-hander from Kain Road on to Old Mt Barker Road. As I started the climb, it wasn’t looking good ahead. I could see lots of fit looking buggers up ahead (who I assumed were doing 110km ride and had caught us up) out of their saddles pushing hard, some less fit riders in their saddles lurching and grinding every pedal stroke and a handful of people walking their bikes up the hill.

Of course, the last thing a cyclist wants to do is to stop and walk up a hill – it seriously dents your pride. It’s okay to stop at the top and reflect on your amazing achievement if you need to, but stopping half way is a major bummer. The only good thing about being beaten by a hill is that it gives you the determination and motivation to go back and try again. Anyway I got halfway up this bloody hill when it became quite clear that my legs were going to explode if I did one more push. Now, successfully stopping and unclipping when you are in that sort state on a steep hill can be a little tricky, but thankfully I managed to separate feet from bike with a certain degree of elegance. By not ungraciously toppling over into the gutter or into the path of another rider, I felt like I’d at least salvaged something from the situation. I even managed to exchange a meaningful grunt and witty comment with two other riders walking their bikes as I alighted. Anyway, after catching my breath I wandered about twenty-five metres up the hill to where it looked like the really really steep bit became just a really steep bit, and jumped back on feeling okay.

Whilst the worst was over, there was a bunch of hills ahead that were destined to be the second worst. Lots of things go through your mind when you are climbing. Now, I don’t know this for sure, but I suspect it probably doesn’t matter what level you are at – whether you a pro on L’Alpes d’Huez or an aging commuter cyclist like me who likes to do some rides in the Adelaide Hills on a sunny day – you still feel the pain and you still need to dig deep. Of course the speed and endurance are radically different – the pro will find enough to sprint to a mountain finish after riding 180km and climbing three mountains, whereas hacks like me will dig deep just to stay upright and keep pedalling until the road flattens out a little and they get some relief. But we’ll all find physical and emotional reserves to fuel our determination.

You find ways to get through it. Like a lot of people who struggle up hills, I break the really steep bits up into bite sized chunks, picking a bush or a rock every 20 metres or so to ride to. Then there’s the more psychological and emotional triggers that inspire you to keep going. It reminds me of the ‘Ride for a Reason’ banners that were on Old Willunga Hill at TDU time which basically said ‘If you think this climb is hard work, try fighting cancer’. Like most of us, I’ve known people who’ve found great courage in times of terrible adversity. For me, there’s been no more courageous soul than my niece, Belinda, who lost her battle with cancer last year. I didn’t have a lot to do with Belinda in her adult life, just seeing her at Christmas’, weddings etc., but it was always clear that she was someone who had an amazing zest for life. What wasn’t so obvious to me was her incredible courage and determination. For her family and everyone who loved her, her loss is an almost unbearable sadness. However, she also leaves an enormous legacy – the amazing strength she displayed throughout her fight with cancer undoubtedly continues to inspire many, many people. It certainly inspires me.

This climbing thing is becoming a bit of an obsession. Apart from hitting the hills every weekend, I’m also currently reading a book about the great Tour de France peaks in the Alps and the Pyrenees and I’ve downloaded all these old cycling docos from YouTube. I’m finding the historical stuff quite fascinating – the exploits of Eddy Merckx (for those who don’t know, widely considered to be greatest rider of them all) or the tragic story the 1967 tour with the great British rider Tom Simpson, who was so loaded up with amphetamines when climbing the infamous Mt Ventoux, that he pushed himself way too hard and died a couple of hundred metres before the summit. Then further back to the early days of the TDF where stages could be over 400km long over mountain roads which were basically goat tracks, with ludicrously draconian race rules. For example, if they had a mechanical problem no assistance was allowed – there was no team car following with a spare bike on the roof. The most famous mechanical problem occured with the perenially unlucky Eugene Christophe in 1913, who broke a fork while descending the Tourmalet. He had to walk to the nearest town, find a blacksmiths workshop, do the repair with no assistance (he couldn’t even have someone operate the bellows) – all of which was done under the scrutiny of race officials. So, not only did they need balls of steel back then, but they also needed to be multi-skilled.

There were no such hard hardships for me on my tour of the Adelaide Hills, but as I turned back onto the main drag at Summertown (with most of the climbing over for the day) I said ‘thank God that’s over’ to a marshal pointing me in right direction. From there it was a pretty cruisy ride through to the Ashton feed station and then down the hill through to Montacute. Once again the decent was fun - the road surface wasn’t the greatest at the start of the descent, but became smoother and faster towards the bottom. Arriving back in the suburbs along Montacute Road, I could see a knobhead in a car pulling out from a side street up ahead in front of a couple of riders. The first rider swerved and braked but the guy following clipped the first riders back wheel and went down. I pulled up to assist and fortunately he was okay - it was one of those hit the ground rolling crashes so he had just a few scrapes. I helped him get his bike sorted and trundled off down the road.

Talking about fixing bikes reminds me of the other aspect of the cycling experience that floats my boat. Over the past couple years I’ve become a reasonably competent bike mechanic. I’ve accumulated quite a collection of bikes for myself and my family. As we don’t have a lot disposable income to spend on new bikes, I’ve tended to buy good quality second hand bikes that need some TLC. So that’s meant developing quite a lot of bike knowledge and a bunch of maintenance skills, all of which I love putting good use tinkering away in the shed. It was quite satisfying to do the Mt Lofty ride on my roadie that I’d built up from scratch using decent quality (Shimano 105/Ultegra) components that I’ve acquired along the way. Also satisfying is that it only cost me around $450 to put together.

Anyway, as I was doing the Monacute descent, I had the feeling that my legs weren’t far off cramping but, given that I was basically cruising into town from there, I thought I'd get away with it. However, the route planners decided to chuck one last little hill into the ride. Stradbroke Road at Newton isn’t much of a climb, but after all that work in the hills, it was enough of a test for both of my thighs to cramp up. I got off the bike and did some stretches for 5 minutes, recovering enough to be on my way. I rode back to the city with quite a large bunch of riders who seemed to be in a justifiably buoyant mood. The only bummer was a couple of boy racers who, not content with basically having the left lane of Kensington Road to ourselves, veered into the right lane as well, much to the justifiable annoyance of tooting motorists. It doesn’t really help the cause.

Miles snapped me at the finish line

I arrived at the finish line to be greeted by the cheers of Karolle and Miles, which was nice. Including stops, the 83km ride took me over  5 hours (riding time was 4 hours 25 minutes), which is very slow, but according to Strava (a website for cyclist/runners that tracks your ride using your GPS data and compares it to other Strava users), not the slowest. Overall it was a demanding ride, but I really enjoyed it. For me, the total ascent of 1440m for the ride (according to my Garmin) was monumental and is certainly not something I could have contemplated a year ago. It was also over 200 metres more climbing than the route map said, so I was pretty happy to get through it feeling okay. Actually, reaching Hindmarsh Square I felt like I had a bit left in the tank, so I reckon I probably could have done the 110km loop. Mind you I would have gotten back sometime after 3pm and everyone would have gone home. So, that’s my goal for next year - do the 110 ride in close to the same time it took me to do the 80 this year. I have to say that I’ve had a bit of a spring in my step since the ride. I see it as a defining moment in my post-smoking recovery and it gives me the confidence to tackle some 100km+ rides.

Bike SA did a superb job with the organisation of the ride – I really couldn’t fault it. The information, support, marshals, feed stations and signage were all first class. All up, a great day.

PS: The ride was two weeks ago and I’ve only just got around to posting this, so there’s now a postscript. I went out last Sunday for a ride in the hills, now confident that I could do my first century. I worked out a 102km route through the hills, down to Meadows and back home through Clarendon. About 30km into the ride, I found myself descending that nasty hill out of Bridgewater that killed me two weeks ago. I’d almost reached the bottom when I heard an ominous ping coming from my back wheel – I’d broken a spoke. Stopping and assessing the situation, I decided to disengage the back brake so the now buckled wheel wouldn’t rub on the brake pads. Given that I still had 70km to ride and I had only front brakes, I decided it was best to turn around and go home (carefully). I thought I might as well salvage something from the situation, so I rolled down to Kain Rd at the bottom of the climb, turned around and had another bash at that hill that caused me such grief a few weeks ago. Anyway I took my revenge and got through all of those hills without stopping, which was pretty satisfying.