I won’t lie, the Taupo Cycle Challenge was bloody hard! It’s interesting how quickly you forget, though. The very next day I decided I want to do it all over again next year.
At our wedding a couple of months earlier, Dee managed to convince Isaac and I to take part in this madness. We’d never done anything like this before – Isaac even had to go out and purchase himself a road bike for the event. As soon as we started our road bike training, though, I realised that we could easily become addicted. Both mountain bikers at heart, Isaac and I never thought we’d take up road biking but here we are, and loving it. (note: it will never replace mountain biking).
Isaac and I did only a month or two of training – 40km rides about 2 or 3 times a week, a couple of 90km rides, we practiced eating the right foods and drinking heaps while riding. We really love those OSM bars and bananas. We purchased a bulk lot of “Gu”, which are sachets of some kind of gooey, sticky stuff full of all the right things you need when riding. You’re supposed to suck it up into your mouth and wash it down with water. The first time I tried one of these I had a tiny taste of it and vowed never to have it again – I thought it tasted disgusting and I couldn’t get past the sticky gooeyness of it!
Our aim was simply to finish the race. We didn’t plan where we would stop to rest along the way, or for how long. We just winged it. I think, with a bit of planning, next year we’ll beat our time. The first 40kms for me was hard. I was not in a good mental state and we pushed ourselves way too hard at the beginning of the race. It’s really hard to find your pace with all the other riders around. We had some fun riding in a pack for a while. This is an amazing feeling, like riding in a vacuum – you go so much faster with little effort. Soon enough the pack broke up and we spaced out. Anyway, back to the first 40kms: my calf muscles were seizing up, like they were on the verge of cramping, and this went on for a while. I thought to myself, “how the hell am I going to carry on like this?”. I told Dee and Isaac and we stopped for a few minutes to eat some food. I felt like I needed magnesium or something, so I forced down a sachet of Gu. Gu is now my dear, dear friend. I believe that without it I would not have made it. I had a Gu every 45mins in addition to other food.
The first 80-100kms of the race is undulating, then there is a period of long straight flats, then one massive hill climb and descent towards the end. For the first 80-100kms it was quite difficult to get into a rhythm, mentally-wise. I’m not sure about the others, but I was complaining a lot in my head and resisting the whole thing. One thing Dee pointed out, though, was that you reach a plateau where the pain doesn’t get any worse, so you can accept it and keep pedaling. After the 100km mark I noticed my mind switch off and I rode for pretty much the rest of the race in this zoned out, automatic state. I stopped complaining, stopped resisting. It’s like my body just said, “Fine. OK. We’re doing this”.
People had told us (including Dee who has done the challenge before) of this massive hill climb towards the end of the race. We had time to mentally prepare ourselves for this climb – “it’s nothing, it’s nothing”. Maybe a hill climb like this at the beginning wouldn’t have bothered me so much but by this stage, we were bloody tired. There were motivational signs placed strategically along the course and we came across our favourite sign when we were approaching this massive hill climb. It said, “Remember, you paid to do this”. We cracked up, incredulous and exasperated – why would we pay money to put ourselves through such suffering?? Anyway, we put our heads down and pedaled the *** up this hill. Photographers perched along the way to take photos of us at our lowest points of suffering – we put on brave faces, fake smiles and all. I’ll never forget reaching the top – it was weirdly emotional and I felt like I might cry. We really celebrated at the top and enjoyed the insane descent down the other side. We were zoning out big time by this stage and, looking back, we were very lucky not to have an accident. As I let myself pick up speed and momentum, with strong side winds threatening to push us sideways, a small thought popped into my head – I imagined coming off the bike and face planting on the road. We were going at about 65km/hr down this hill and it’s not like we were wearing full face helmets…
The last hour or so after this was hard for me because I thought we were closer to the finish than we were. When we were about 7kms away from the finish line, Isaac and Dee started to celebrate, but I was starting to lose my shit. I told them we can’t celebrate yet, we’re not finished, let’s bring it home!! We pushed hard and fast then until the end. Rounding the last corner and seeing the finish line up ahead gave me another emotional moment, and seeing the crowds and hearing the commentators really egged us on across the line, three abreast. Total time was 8hrs including over an hour worth of break stops along the way.
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