Survival report by Ainsy

5.45 am, meet up with Jerard and ride down to registration where we meet up with Ryan.

The plan…Jerard, me, Ryan and his triathlon mate Dave start the ride together. Sounds great in theory…in practice this lasted all of 5 seconds. Whoosh and Ryan and his mate were off into the sunrise.

Never mind a long day ahead and we don’t want to burn too much petrol early and pay for it later.

Easy ride out and the early lights on Great Eastern Highway grouped teams together. Through Guildford we paced ourselves behind a team resplendent in Garmin kit. Passed a few slower groups through Midland before the first climb of the day, Greenmount.

I have done this climb once before on a Sunday ride, but only to John Forrest National Park so we were looking forward to doing the whole climb to Mundaring. A lot longer climb than our Sunday climb but a little less intensity thanks to the journey ahead. This time around we had the Garmin twins sucking our wheels up the climb. Up the top to Mundaring and onto Mundaring Weir Rd on they way to the first checkpoint.

Checkpoint 1 Mundaring Weir, top up on water and Staminade, banana stamp the passport and off and away. I actually had time to see the Weir Sunday, usually I am busting my as$ trying to get on Mike B’s wheel. Pretty impressive sight.

Passing some familiar tarmac we had the option of staying on Mundaring Weir Rd up the usual climb for coffee in Kalamunda or staying on course towards dam 2, Churchmans Brook. We took door #2.

Saw some SPR jerseys on the road coming the other way and saw the regular SPR advanced boys regrouping. Thanks boys your support was greatly appreciated.

Checkpoint 2 Churchmans Brook. Took a little longer to get there than I would have liked, legs feeling a little worse than I would have liked at this stage, Jerard looking strong. Should have been less of a lazy bastard the past couple of weeks, should have trained more etc etc. Could have, should have, would have..Oh well have to soldier on. Same as before stamp the passport, fill the water bottles…what no bananas!

No sooner had we left checkpoint 2 we had arrived at checkpoint 3, Wungong Dam and lunch….at 9 am!

Checkpoint 3 Wungong Dam. We were getting into the routine of filling the water bottles with water and Staminade first. We also had an opportunity to fill our guts with some real food (I am OVER bars and gels right now) being half a tuna roll. With stomachs full we set off again, up a 20% incline out of the dam, just what you need after some food and drink stop. This is where I started to have doubts about this whole exercise. I had real trouble getting into a tempo and had to get Jerard to ease up a little. Luckily Jerard’s experience in riding distance came to the fore and offered much advice reinforcing the need to keep eating and drinking.

Onto Albany Hwy, next stop Canning Dam Jerard doing all the work at the front and me just sucking wheels at this stage. Onto Canning Dam Rd and some pretty undulating roads through here. Not doing much for my confidence here, not even half way there and am ready to bonk big time.

Checkpoint 4 Canning Dam. We get there, usual procedure. Not looking forward to staring up again, but this is where things start to look up a little. We push ourselves a little through the rolling hills out of Canning Dam to tack onto a group with several Arbitrage riders. We manage to get on and stay with them back onto Albany Hwy with the Arbitrage boys doing the lion’s share of the work along here. Happy to stay in and try to recover, keep eating and drinking. Passing the halfway mark is a bittersweet feeling, happy to know I can countdown from here but also very aware of the task left considering my physical state. We do a few turns to contribute and are getting along at a nice pace. We make a right into Jarradale Rd and continue to work to get to Serpentine Dam. A left turn onto Kingsbury Drive and we are on the way to Dam 5, Serpentine.

Checkpoint 5 Serpentine Dam. All the boys are relieved to get here and the opportunity to stretch, top up on fluids and cram some bananas. Also a good time to slip slop slap as we have been on the road for some time and the sun is starting to bore into the skin. The 2 minute call is given and we are all up and going again, including our friends in the Garmin jerseys who have managed to stay with us.

I was staring to feel a little more positive after this as I was under the (incorrect) assumption that the hills were behind us and it was (relatively) easy street from here….wrong. The was still a little sting in the Serpentine tail before we could flat land. The legs were pretty buggered but managed a turn with Jerard to get out of the hills and onto the big decent towards the freeway and the autopilot home. Great fun on the decent and regrouping to share the work again. We passed Karnet Prison farm (maybe they should have called it the 5 dams and a prison challenge), not much too see there luckily and would not recommend and a place for a holiday.

Next stop Serpentine and then onto one of the worst parts of the ride…Karnup Rd, or the (seemingly) endless road. This thing seemed to go on and on. All you could see ahead was road, long boring straight road. This was coupled by the fact that the sea breeze was in and we were beating into it. We strung out into a long line with riders doing turns for as long as they could before peeling off the front to the rear for a breather. Finally we saw what we were striving for…the freeway entry, 1 last checkpoint.

Checkpoint 6 Freeway. Again time to fill the water bottles with water and staminade, and a big snake (of the lolly variety) for a sugar hit before the final onslaught. The Garmin brothers had popped on the way to the checkpoint and were only arriving as the group were preparing to leave. We bode them farewell and headed into South Perth and a well earned breather. At this time weary legs abounded and everyone was looking forward to the finish. With the slight assistance of the sea breeze we tried to keep a steady 35 km average in groups of 2 doing approx 2 k stints each. Pretty uneventful with the exception of the few rollers and blind turns on this most uninteresting stretch of bike path. Once we were back into familiar territory you could sense the relief in the group that there was enough petrol in the tank to get to the finish.

Onto the final stretch of the freeway from Como to South Perth we were left to ride the group to the finish. Jerard was feeling strong and I think had ambitions of blowing the group off and sprinting to the finish, but this may have caused a few discussions judging by the voices of discontent behind so we slowed and led the group to the finish.

Very happy to have finished and we were the first main bunch home with only 2 other teams arriving before us, with that freak Ryan Fynn and Dave smashing us by near an hour taking the chocolates on the day with the second team over 20 minutes behind! Great effort boys, well impressed!

We found Ryan near the finish sitting down unable to stand and his partner Dave crashed out big time.

I learned a lot from this especially regarding the vital importance to EAT AND DRINK EARLY and not to stop doing this. On a ride of this size you are going to go through bad patches. You have to push through this and you will feel better as long as you have the foundation of proper hydration and calorie intake prior to this. When you do come good and feel stronger try not to push too yourself too much as you may find yourself on the fast track to bonktown.

All in all a great experience and would be something I would recommend for someone who really wants to challenge themselves.

Thanks to Jerard for talking me into doing this and for his experience and strength on the day.