When I first fucked my ankle a bunch of years ago, I bought a mountain bike thinking that might be my new thing that only required one good leg. I entered a couple of events, but was completely shithouse at it. I entered Adventurethon in WA and when I hit a sand trap at 30km/hr and the bike stopped dead launching me over the handlebars, I decided that maybe, just maybe, I’d be better off running on one leg than trying that shitfuckery again.
There was also that time in Moab when I figured I may have miraculously gotten better at riding a MTB despite doing absolutely zero practice and it ended up like this.
As shit as falling over when you’re running is, it turns out falling from your feet at maybe 10km/hr is usually way better than falling from on top of a bike at maybe 20, 30 or 40km/hr. I know fuck all about physics but I’m pretty sure there’d be a formula that proves that when you factor in height x speed x weight and throw in a few other little numbers and symbols for good measure, you’re 272.65% more likely to get fucked up crashing your bike than tripping while you’re running.
So I could honestly not tell you why I decided to do Gravelfest this year other than Morgan the Race Director said “You should do Gravelfest” and I said “OK”. But I checked out the details, none of it was actually what you’d call ‘technical’, it was mostly gravel back roads, which explains the name, and there was a 45km distance which seemed do-able if I got back on the bike for a little bit of training.
I tell Morgs I’m in for the 45, even though I’m not actually sure I’ve ever ridden that far ever before on any surface ever, and he says “oh, the 65 course is really nice” so for reasons I cannot explain, I sign up for that instead. Actually, we all know the reasons and they’re all because I’m a fucking dickhead.
To make matters worse, I look at my Strava to see when I last rode my bike any distance at all, and it was May, literally three months earlier. I take some consolation in the fact that if I train a bit, it might not suck too bad, but it turns out September comes after August and it’s already the middle of August and I have precisely three weeks to train. So I ride to and from work once, clocking a total of about 30kms for the day, one other quick 10km ride, then go straight into taper.
Possibly not the best pre-event training log
But it’s cool, I’ll be OK, I mean, what could possibly go wrong?
I pack the night before and decide on an ioMerino tank and a cotton check shirt, because I’m pretty sure that’s what all the cool kids are wearing on their mountain bikes these days and I want to look like I fit in. I also dig out my bike pants with the built-in padding because… fucking ouch.
In a masterstroke of planning, I don’t bother checking the weather report and yep, you can see where this is going. I just figure it was quite nice during the week, so it will probably be quite nice during the race and there’s probably a reason I’m not on Channel Ten doing the weather report.
On the way up the freeway to the start line at Monarto I get hit by a massive storm but I’m in a car and it’s no biggy. As I come over the other side of the Adelaide Hills the sky clears and I think thank fuck for that. I snigger a bit at the thought it would have hit he 105 riders right before they started at 8am, and figure I’ll be starting in lovely sunshine at 9am and fuck karma’s a bitch sometimes ain’t it?
When I get there I duck into the portaloo, and it’s the site of the famous Poogate incident before The Fed Ultra so I make sure to check the paper supply first this time, and booya, multiple rolls!
I then walk over to say hi to The Big Boss at the ioMerino tent just in time to grab hold of the marquee as it fucking launches in an extreme gust of wind. Clothes are flying everywhere, the mannequins are down, and I’m holding on for dear life. It’s one of the few times being a bit of a fat cunt comes in handy, otherwise I would probably be marquee-surfing down the Murray River at this point. I should mention, the Murray is a few kms away but if I’d been a few kgs lighter, who knows? I’m calling it a win.
I assume this is just a freak gust of wind and it doesn’t occur to me this might actually be the weather for the next five hours. I do however, decide to swap my bullshit check shirt for a long sleeve ioMerino top I’ve stashed in the car for after the race, and to say it probably saved my life is perhaps a little dramatic, but also, not necessarily inaccurate. It certainly stopped me from looking like an even bigger fucking idiot than I usually do.
The sun is out and the pictures at the start line look like it’s quite nice, but we’ve covered a grand total of about one or two kms when Storm 2.0 hits. Plenty of riders pull over and put their rain jackets on but I decide to push on, mostly because I haven’t bothered to pack a rain jacket and decide instead to just get soaking fucking wet and freezing fucking cold 2kms in to a 65km race. And look, ioMerino is great, but wearing it soaking wet in the freezing cold for five fucking hours is always gonna be a big ask. And because I went with some cool skull socks to match the check shirt I’m not even wearing, my feet are like ice blocks. Same with my hands because I’ve opted for fashion over function there as well and I know ‘Hustler’ gloves probably aren’t all that fashionable and definitely not all that PC but it reminds me of the time I met Larry Flynt in Vegas when I was working at AVN – an ‘adult convention’ but that’s a story for… absolutely fucking never.
As people ride past and I see the mud splatters up the back of their pants, I somehow manage to resist the urge to say “ha ha you’ve got poo on your bum” and miraculously continue to resist for the next five hours. Trust me, that was almost as difficult as some of the hills.
Truthfully, there was nothing that a legit cyclist would probably even describe as a ‘hill’ in this course. But I’m not what you would probably even described as a ‘legit cyclist’, or even a shit one, so pretty much every bump in the road was tough for me.
For those of you who don’t ride, you can never know the true, debilitating pain your ass feels being on a bike seat when you’re not used to it. You try to find a more comfortable position, but let’s be honest, a bike seat just isn’t that big so you can only move so far forward and so far back or to the side, at the end of the day that bike seat is fair square right there, and fuck it’s not great. At this stage, my ass is already sorer than a Sunday morning if I’d ordered a Rohypnol Cocktail at The Mars Bar the night before, and lucky me I only have about 60kms to go.
I eventually make it to the 27km aid station which is at the 33km mark, and thank fuck for that. I have some salt and vinegar chips, refill my water flask then look out at Storm 3.0 coming right at us. One of the other riders says “let’s wait for it to blow through” and yep, that sounds like a fucking great suggestion and in fairness, when the wind is blowing as hard as it is, it could very well do that. We’ve already gone from sun to rain to sun again so who knows? Maybe it will? We all huddle inside the CFS shed but I’m feeling pretty shithouse and all I want to do is finish and get warm again so I ask the CFS guy if he reckons it will pass soon. He glances over at the weather radar he’s loaded on his computer screen and says “I don’t like your chances” and mate, you might be great at fighting fires but your bedside manner can eat a big bag of dicks. So I think fuck it, jump back on the bike, and head off. Even though I don’t like my own chances of making it to the finish alive.
I think about the couple who rode in on a tandem bike while I was there and plan to do all my future bike races on one of those with someone who isn’t shithouse at riding a bike so I can just put my feet up and enjoy the scenery. Something I’m not really able to do with the rain stinging my face like a swarm of angry bees.
Totally doing my nest bike race on one of these.
The wind is now basically gale force and the hills seem twice as steep, to the point where a few times I just get off the bike and push the fucking thing. I’m thinking about how tough it is when a bunch of 105 riders come flying past and I seriously consider grabbing a branch to stick in their spokes as they go past and I don’t know what the fuck they or their bikes are made of but fuck. It probably doesn’t hurt that they actually ride bikes usually, but still, fuck.
I manage to get my shit together enough to ride up one of the hills and when I finally crest it, I think thank fuck for that at least I can roll down the other side and nope, the headwind is so strong I’m not even rolling down and what. the actual. fuck. That’s just absolute fucking bullshit.
At times I have to work hard just to keep the bike going in a straight line, and I’m no lightweight so that gives you some idea of how strong the wind was. I keep looking at my Garmin trying to break down the remaining distance, dreading the last two little ascents… 20kms to go… 19kms to go… I figure if I can just get to 5kms to go it looks like a relatively flat run home and fuck, this wind is so strong and am I actually going backwards now?
Coming in towards the last few kms is the bit of flowy single track we did early on in the race and I give it a bit of a bash without all the other riders around and fuck that’s fun and I actually overtake someone. The first time I did it I overtook someone but only because they stacked it, and this time I overtake someone who is still rubber side down and I do a mental fist pump and ride on to the finish line feeling cold, wet, like spewing, but also victorious.
I go to see The Big Boss at the ioMerino tent but it’s not there and I wonder if he went home already or if he’s chasing the clothes and marquee down the road without me there to anchor it. (He’d gone home after everything kept blowing away. If anyone finds some ioMerino in any of the neighbouring towns it’s finders keepers.)
I smash a veggie burger as the band plays ‘Rolling In The Deep’ which tickles my funny bone – which for the record is nowhere near my coccyx which is nowhere near feeling tickled, and neither are my private parts. I pack my muddy bike into the back of the car, and do the longest drive ever down the freeway home to have a hot shower in the hope I get feeling back in my hands and feet.
On the way home I look at the temperature gauge on the car and it’s six fucking degrees coming through the hills and later find out it actually snowed and note to self, check the fucking weather forecast next time dickhead. I guess it would have been a little warmer down on the plains, but it sure as shit wasn’t tank top 25.
I upload my data to Strava and it literally says “well done for managing your effort” as if I’ve somehow intentionally taken it easy and what I did manage to do was stay alive and finish and yay for me. It also listed my effort as “lower than average” and I suspect that’s because they measure things like heart rate and not how much your ass is killing you. Also, fuck you Strava you judgemental fuck.
After I get home I’m messaging my friend Minnie who also did the 65 and she says “Can you please write in your race report that today was fucking shit”, so I do.
I don’t send out newsletters very often, because I mostly can’t be arsed, and sure as shit don’t send spam, but if you’re keen to get not really semi-regular updates of the stuff I write, click here to sign up.
