This year has been a hard one to keep up motivation—whereas in the past I was happy to knock out 15-20 slow hours weekly, I struggle no. But I suppose what I do end up doing on the bike is better quality, because I think my speed is faster when it comes to race time.
Anyway, yesterday was one of those days. It rained all night and we doubted the likelihood of getting out at all (noooo more rolllersss!!!), but morning rolled around sunny and bright, which was nice after several weeks of overcast weather.
We rolled out to Bunya just after eight, meeting Simon and Matt at nine. We had time to hit few trails on the way. Following some more trails at Bunya, including riding up the ones that are far more fun riding down, we rode across to Ironbark, which is a nice gateway to the longer rides up Nebo, Gap, Samford and Camp Mountain.
From there, we headed up and down a few singletracks (once again somehow riding up the best trail to ride down!) and over to the powerlines and rail-trail track at the base of Camp Mountain.
Camp mountain is always a really nice ride. Despite the fact that it's also a sharp little ten minute pinch towards the top which always leaves me begging the question 'where is the top...goddammit!'.
From here Matt and Simon piked on us. I was quite happy to be a piker as well, but my husband put me in my place...we were going down Nebo to Gap.
From the top of Camp Mountain, it's a short steep bitumen descent followed by a few km's on the road to get to the 'short cut' across to South Boundary rd (aka: road to Nebo).
Aido hadn't ridden this in a year or so, and forewarned me that there was a small amount of walking following the awesomely long brake-burning descent.
Ha! It was about a km or so of near vertical, red clay hike-a-bike, that you couldn't ride even if you had a granny gear! Followed by a km of riding this really deceptive grass trail, that really truly looked like it was flat, but somehow was a serious climb! This was followed by some more clay goat-track, and eventually (with legs stinging from the vertical hike) we hooked onto South Boundary. It was about two-thirds up the climb to Nebo, but we headed down to Gap.
By this stage I was quite grumpy. I should know by now that 'short walk' in Aido talk can be likened to his version of 'short climb', which he proceeded to use on me later during the ride to trick me into following his way home. Which included a long climb. Bastard.
Anyway, the gel I had at that time didn't even help very much. We hit the Gap at around four hours. Which isn't a crazy long time to be out on the bike, but there were a crazy amount of bergs involved in this ride...and I probably didn't eat as well as I could have, either.
Followed by a coffee and some lentil soup at Stop 16...I eventually felt a bit better (after two double macchiatos), but was still shaking when I hit the shower at home an hour and a half later. Yikes!