Unfortunately, about 2kms into the climb my derailleur, which had just started acting up on me the day before, decided it might be fun to throw my chain right off the small chainring. I had 4 pedal rotations to try to shift the chain back on (calling out “Chain, chain, chain” to alert the riders behind)…1st rotation, nothing, second rotation, nothing but grinding, third rotation, grinding but no ‘catch’, and then the forth rotation, nothing. Coasting uphill with no power going to the back cassette eventually (quickly!) catches up with a cyclist and just as I came to a stop I unclipped my right pedal so I could step off the bike and manually put the chain back on. Unfortunately, my bike was leaning to the left as I did this, and I had one of those cartoon bubble thought moments – “I’m going to fall” followed quickly by “so much for riding with the front group” before starting a slow speed fall in front of hundreds of riders coming up from behind. As a bonus, I sprained my finger, and picked up a nice chainring tattoo and series of parallel gouges in my right calf! I put the chain back on the chainring by hand but this took awhile so by the time I got back on the bike at least 150 riders had passed me. I wanted to make sure I was in a fast group at the top of Grey rd 19 so hammered the next 4 kms of the climb. I’m not generally a good hillclimber but I swear by the time I reached the top of Grey rd 19 I had regained 100 of the 150 places lost due to my fall. I ended up slotting into the third group overall – we could see the large front group off in the distance, and a smaller second group was only about 200 metres in front of us (I think this was Joe’s group) but over the next 20 kms we just could not bridge the gap.
As we approached the Epping King of the Mountain 5 km climb, I moved up toward the front of my group – I tend to fall back on hillclimbs so wanted to start as far forward as possible. The climb went fairly well, although about half of my group topped the climb in front of me, and the other half was about 200m behind. Oh no, the dreaded ‘solo ride’ scenario had just presented itself. The wind was a good 15-20 kms/hr from the SE, and I knew a solo ride would spell nothing but fatigue, so sat up and waited for the second half of the group to catch up. As soon as the group caught me we all started working exceptionally well together – short, fast turns at the front and no surging splitting up the group. In under 10 minutes we caught the group in front of us, which in turn had caught another smaller group, so suddenly I was back in a group of about 70 riders! We turned the corner onto Grey rd 40 and absolutely FLEW the next 10 kms of mainly downhill. Once we turned onto the false flat/draggy uphill on Grey rd 2 the group came back together again so we settled in for a long grinding climb into the wind. No one in the group pushed the pace too much here, so I think I ended up losing about 5 minutes in this one section alone – still worth it vs. the alternative of a long solo ride into the wind! About 20 riders popped off the back in this section, so then we were down to 50.
The group turned onto the final climb up the backside of Grey rd 19 and, based on last year’s experience of losing >10 places on the downhill run, I decided to push the pace to the top of the hill. A group of about 10 of 50 riders did the same, and we got to the top of Grey 19 with 40 riders strung out behind. The downhill run into Blue village was fantastic – with a tailwind I hit my new speed record of 82.1 kms/hr, but unfortunately so did everyone behind me, and by the bottom of the hill the group of 50 riders was back together again and really pushing the pace…39-48 kms/hr for the last 5 kms into the village! I knew I couldn’t accelerate enough to move up within the group so did the next best thing – on the last 3 turns in to the village I took an extreme inside line each time and must have passed about 20 riders in the process. The last kilometre was an all out sprint, trying to hold onto as many positions as possible. At one point I glanced at my heartrate monitor and it read 176 BPM…pretty close to my alltime high of 179! Crossed the line in 2:43:45 which was good for 192nd place, and was generally happy with this given the whole chainring/finger fiasco near the start.
It was great seeing the Kate’s Kause tent in the village afterwards and meeting a few more of the team members I hadn’t met before. Hearing a few days later that we had raised over $5500 was just icing on the cake!