Myself, Marc, Kevin and Billy had signed up for The Gong Ride on Sunday morning, so I had to cut the Budgie 100 celebrations short and get to bed early to try and avoid a hangover. Sunday was another day of shit weather, though pulling out of the race wasn’t an option as I knew Marc would ride regardless and it was also the 25th Anniversary ride.

This didn’t deter Billy, who phoned in from his warm bed to say he wouldn’t be getting up. We found out later that day that he’d just got engaged (and Lisa pregnant – not that morning obviously) so while people might construe that as an excuse, his prior form would indicate that he’d have stayed in bed regardless.

Out the door at 5.30am, drive to Centennial Park to meet Marc, get the bike out of the boot and ride to the start of the event. Kev showed up a little later and we were ready to start around 7am. The target was to ride the 90km in under four hours, so we needed an average pace of 22.5km/h. With the numbers of people doing the event estimated at up to 10,000 there was always going to be some congestion en route, and it turned into a pretty slow start until we got out past Cronulla and things thinned out a bit.

It was raining on and off, and the wind was in our face the whole way, so the four hour target didn’t look feasible. I was tempted by the muffin stop at Loftus Oval, but Marc was determined to break four hours and didn’t want to stop. The event held personal significance for him as his Dad has MS, so I was more than happy to have him set the pace. Shortly after Loftus Oval we were joined by those who had signed up for the 56km option and the pace dropped off again as we tried weaving through the crowds.

We entered the National Park at Waterfall and had to wait for a motorcycle escort down the steep hill into the park. There’d been accidents on this stretch in previous years, so everyone was forced to slow down. Once at the bottom we had plenty of climbing ahead of us until we exited the park at Otford. Despite having done the ride with Kev last year, I was suprised when we arrived at Otford without too much climbing at all. My memory had obviously exaggerated the severity of the climbs!

We were now out on the exposed coast road and the wind & rain were still present. We got held up again waiting for a police motorcycle to escort us down Bald Hill to Stanwell Park, but once that was over it was a realtively flat run to Woollongong. By the 15km marker I was getting pretty fed up with the day as the weather was starting to piss me off, so I decided to leave Marc and Kev behind and get the final 15km over with as quickly as possible.

By this time we were riding on a bike path instead of the road, so our speeds were down a bit, but I found a big mountain biker to draft off for a few kilometres and then was on my own for the remainder. The finish seemed to take an age to reach and once it was finally in sight I rounded a corner only to find one final hill to climb and after that it was all over!

A quick massage later and we were off to find a pub and reward ourselves with beer and food. The total time for me was 4h12m, but once stoppages had been removed it was 3h50. Both Kev and Marc also made it under four hours, coming in at 3h57 and 3h58 respectively.

Marc’s Photos