In which Tony Melton, Danny Peters and Peter Bier attempt the inaugural Hamilton to Auckland cycle race.
I thought I would chronicle yesterday’s events for posterity. There were several things that made the race a little different from previous things we have done.
Saturday night preparation:
Tony and I drove down to Hamilton on Saturday to make sure we were “well rested” before our race. This backfired a little as Tony and Danny decided to go trials riding (until 11pm). They got to bed sometime past midnight but did manage a good feed of potatoes and pasta.
I spent the evening playing on exercise machines at a gym, shopping for last minute race supplies and then searching for a restaurant to carbo load at. Unfortunately the restaurant search started at around 10:30pm so no pasta was available and I had to settle for Pizza at 11:30pm. It felt more like fat loading then carbo loading :-p
Race day:
Every one woke up at 5:30am. In Danny and Tony’s case it was because someone smashed a stolen car into two of the cars parked outside Danny’s house. The car took out one flatmate’s vehicle than span in to another one, took out a tree and then rolled over on to its roof. Rather a dramatic awakening!
I picked up Danny and Tony and took them back to by my hotel for last minute coker tweaking. Tony and I were riding our custom cokers and Danny had borrowed a stock standard coker. We all decided to ride with 125mm cranks for at least the first 50km of the race as the first half was made of flat terrain. I managed to break Tony’s brake so he had to remove his trusty Maguras and then it was off to the start line, about a 1km ride from my hotel.
We had prearranged to start an hour and a half early so we could finish before the end of the race. The timing crew cheered as off as we left the start line and started out along the main state highway. Fortunately we only had to ride for 15km along the main road before ducking off onto quieter back roads. It was a very peaceful journey, for the next hour and a half with river views for much of it.
The first 50km fair flew by at a pleasant cruising speed of 17km/h. Around this point cyclists started to catch us and we gradually adjusted to the steady stream of cyclists and usual comments.
At around the 55km mark the hills started to rear there ugly heads and after a few battles up them Danny decided to switch to 150s. Tony and I were both surprised to find we were coping with 125s and decided we would stick with them for the entire race. The next few km were pretty hard going with a lot of uphill work. The only real joy was we got to pass a few cyclists who were also struggling up. Tony started leaving us in the dust as his superior power to weight ratio kicked in. Around the 60km mark we all ran out of water which was a bit of a worry in the middle of nowhere. Eventually Danny and I found a golf course club house to fill up which kept us going. Finally reaching the top of a long climb meant a very nice decent downhill stretch.
Around the 80km mark tiredness was starting to set in and Danny was cramping pretty badly. Tony has long since disappeared ahead and I ended up riding somewhere in the middle. Most cyclists had passed us by now so it was very quiet riding with not much in the way of distractions. The last few hills had me on the verge of cramp but thanks to a regular intake of leppin squeezes (liquid carbo gel) I held on ok to the end.
I finished in around 6 and a half hours (official time still pending) about half an hour behind Tony and a mere couple of minutes ahead of Danny who had struggled through his cramp to maintain a good pace.
We recovered at the finish line where our enthusiastic support team of Kirsten met us. After a breather and answering a million questions from fellow cyclists we did a 4km victory ride to ensure we all rode a full 100km as the official race length was 97km. All in all it was a challenging day and the best thing is I can still ride and walk a day later 
(That was myself and Tim who came to see you guys off).