Saturday 11 February - Rowan and I drove down to a place near Phillip Island on Friday night, with the intent of riding a 400K randonnee today.

We were up at 5 am, and ready to go for the 6:30 am start. The ride went reasonably well at first, although the traffic was already getting heavy at that early hour, and there was a fair amount of construction about.

We had just gotten onto Phillip Island (maybe 30 km into the ride) when the first wave of heavy rain came over, and we were soaked. Good thing we had rain gear with us, or we would have been really uncomfortable! From there on, it was one wave of rain after another. I just had a look now, and a Severe Storm Warning was issued late afternoon for flash flooding, heavy rain, and large hail.

Our route took us off the heavy traffic roads and onto some quieter, but significantly hillier roads. Unfortunately, climbing with tandem is a bit of a challenge. We were pleased with the new cassette with a 36T big cog, Rowan installed days before this event, but even so we struggled with the climbs.

At the 136 km point, at the end of the first loop, we rolled into the start/finish area tired, wet ... with only an hour of time to spare before starting the second, even hillier loop. Faced with worse weather than we had already experienced, and with even more hills than we had just come through, we decided to DNF the 400K. It just wasn't any fun anymore.

But ... 136 km is really close to a century (161 km), and we needed a century for February, so we continued to ride, on a slightly different route, and finished the day with 162 km.

So our February century is complete.