Eildon Endurance 300K - December 10th
The Eildon Endurance goes through the area where we live and a year ago, when the Eildon Endurance was last held, Rowan and I saw some of the cyclists riding it. At that time I thought they were nuts. There is a lot of climbing on that ride and as such, it was not on my list of rides to do.
But over the past few months, we've been working on our climbing in preparation for the 7 Peaks Alpine Ascent Challenge, and I have been feeling a lot more comfortable with the idea of climbing. Three weeks ago, we rode a loop from Yarck to Euroa, up the Ruffy climb, and then back to Yarck via Merton, up the Merton climb ... the two biggest climbs on the Eildon Endurance. We had ridden that loop a couple years ago, and I walked a little bit of the Ruffy climb and most of the Merton climb. But three weeks ago, I rode up both the climbs without too much difficulty.
Two weeks ago, Rowan and I took a 3-day weekend, and took on 3 of the 7 Peaks: Falls Creek, Mount Hotham, and Mount Buffalo. All 3 were challenging climbs and we logged over 12,000 ft of climbing on that weekend. And last weekend we took on another 7 Peaks climb: Lake Mountain. So with all that climbing under our belts, we decided to ride the Eildon Endurance!
But what bicycle(s) to ride? Initially we decided to ride our titaniums which we used on the previous three weekends, but with just a few days to go, Rowan changed our granny on the tandem from 30 to 26, and on the Wednesday we took it for a test ride up a couple of the hills on the edge of our town which we would climb on the Eildon Endurance. We made it up both of them, and decided to use the tandem. After all, although there were at least two big climbs, and some stiff climbs on the edge of our town, the rest of the ride was flat or downhill.
So Friday night we drove up to Shepparton, the starting town, and headed to bed early.
4:30 am we were up and getting ready, and at 5:30 am we were off to find the start location ... and found the wrong road. So we ended up parking a little ways away and riding to the cabin. But it was all OK, we arrived in time, registered, chatted briefly to some of the other riders, and set off. Some of the riders were doing the ride as a permanent and thus were doing a shorter distance. And a few of the riders were doing the 400K distance. I think we might have been the only riders doing the 300K distance.
The temperature was warm (20C), but the clouds were thick and heavy all around. It was also quite humid and a bit windy, with winds gusting up to 35 km/h.
We were into the wind as we cycled eastward to Nalinga, so we were off to a bit of a slow start, but at Nalinga we turned south down to Violet Town and we picked up the pace despite the unexpected rolling hills along that road. We stopped a couple times on the way to Violet Town to stretch, eat, and drink. Riding the tandem doesn't allow us much opportunity for any of that while riding. Also on the way to Violet Town, a band of rain came over and were dampened for the first time on the ride.
When we got to Violet Town, some of the permanent riders were there and we had a quick bite to eat with them. It is nice to be able to ride near other riders these days. And then they headed back to Shepparton and we continued on to Euroa.
We had a quick stop in Euroa to put on some rain gear because we could see the rain ahead and knew we would soon be quite wet. But because it was warm (close to 25C by then), I didn't want to wear my rain jacket. At that temperature it is hard to know what to do ... wear the jacket and get soaked with sweat, or skip the jacket and get soaked with rain. But I did wear a wind vest so that I wouldn't get chilled.
The next leg of the journey was the Merton climb. It starts with a very gradual climb, with a few practice hills to get warmed up, and then at Watchbox Creek, the real climbing begins. The climb is about 3 km, and we made it to about 300 metres from the top before we were off and walking. I was quite impressed with that attempt because climbing can be challenging with a tandem, and this was a steep climb.
But a funny thing ... the Murphy's Law of Cycling states that a cyclist will ride for quite some time with no traffic at all, and when traffic finally appears on the scene, two vehicles will pass each other right beside the cyclist. An addition to that law is that there is a greater chance of that happening if the cyclist is doing something difficult or challenging such as climbing a hill. I have never seen so much traffic on that hill! We had line ups of vehicles behind us and line ups coming down the hill toward us, all trying to get by each other and us. Fortunately everyone was well behaved and there were no incidents.
And it rained all along that stretch. We were soaked by the time we got to the top, so we put on the rain jackets for the quick descent into Merton.
After Merton there's a bit of a slog in the form of a long gradual hill with a steeper bit at the end, but then it's all downhill to Yarck. The road to Alexandra starts with a hill, and ends with a pair of hills before descending into town. We've never ridden those hills after riding 100+ km before ... we've always ridden them when we've been relatively fresh. It was a new perspective on how tough those things can be, and we were ready for a break at home.
Being able to go home partway through the ride was one of the appealing aspects of this ride, even though we had to ride a little bit extra to do that. We had prepared in advance, so we were able to do a quick turnaround ... getting something to eat, oiling the chain on the tandem, and changing into dry clothes.
Next was an out-and-back to Eildon, an out-and-back we've done frequently ... very familiar territory for us. And so, that was a fast part of the ride because we knew what to expect. Then back home again for a quick snack, and then onward to tackle the two climbs out of town. They felt longer than they did on Wednesday.
It was fairly smooth sailing back to Yarck and on to the base of the Ruffy climb. There were some heavy rain clouds in the area, and I thought we were going to end up in the rain, but we ended up behind one bank of clouds, and another band passed by, just missing us. In fact, after soaking us in the early part of the ride, the last 2/3 of the ride were dry.
The Ruffy climb was just short of 3 km, but we only made it about 3/4 of a km before we were off and walking. I've had some difficulties with my knees since our 3-day climbing weekend, and they were protesting the steepness of this climb. Walking was marginally easier.
The descent back into Euroa is frightening, and one of our goals was to get into Euroa before dark so that we would not have to do any part of that descent in the dark. The descent is not particularly steep, but the road conditions are horrendous. We couldn't get up any speed because of all the potholes, and even so it was hard to miss all of them and it ended up being a bumpy ride down.
At Euroa we arrived at a cafe about 15 minutes before closing, just in time to get our cards signed and grab a bite to eat. By the time we got going again, it was dark. We had 50 km to go on a long, straight flat road. A few minutes after starting out, the full moon came out and lit up the fields and trees around us. It accompanied us all the way back to Shepparton. What also accompanied us was the view of a thunderstorm in the distance ... flash after flash of lightening.
That road seemed long. We were cruising along quite briskly but it seemed to take forever to reach the outskirts of Shepparton. Night riding is a bit like that. Then just as we reached the outskirts of Shepparton, the thunderstorm got closer and some of the flashes of lightening were around us.
We got our cards signed at a petrol station, walked over to drop the cards off, and just as we got back to the van, the skies opened up and it poured!!
But we had completed the Eildon Endurance 300K (with a total distance ridden of 312 km) in 17 hours and 12 minutes.
I didn't get many photos on this ride ... too busy riding ... but here's one:
And the November 20th photos in this set, on the following pages, are on the same route:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/machka-...etail/?page=15
http://www.flickr.com/photos/machka-...etail/?page=16