Otway Odyssey

Friday
The family all packed up and drove down on the Friday before the race. 10hrs, 890kms. Hume Highway all the way down to Melbourne from Canberra then the Great Ocean Road out the other side to Apollo Bay.
We passed through Wandong on the way through. The evidence of the Victorian bush fires is on show for all. Burnt trees line the freeway and there are even charded directional signs where they have been licked by the fires. It is both sad and amazing to witness the devastation caused, how a "tool" we consider to be under man's control can cause such a disaster zone.
Registration was simple and straight forward, with it all over and done with in 20 minutes. Good organisation by the management crew was good to see.

Saturday- Race Day
An early start to be ready for the kick off at 7.15am. Fill hydra pac, prep food, pump tires, race numbers, electronic tag, and ready to roll.
I seeded my self up towards the front to avoid the carnage, gun goes and we're off. For once I can't hear any crashes off the start line as everyone is pretty chill, it's a long day ahead. Everythings rolling smoothly left turn onto Wild Dog Road first few corners, grades still OK, then bang road tilts for the sky.

Apollo Bay to Reservoir (KOM Climb)
Up to this point I wasn't sure how I was going to ride the race Try and be aggressive, and push for a quick time and risk ending up in the serious "hurt box" or ride more conservatively and try and pick things up towards the finish. I choose the second option, be conservative aim to finish well and not kill myself. I set tempo at 156-165bpm and just stayed in this range, alot of people started passing me at this point but I'm just trying to stay relaxed knowing that the first 40km of this course just kills everyone because of the constant climbing and sharp up hill pitches. Also of note I saw someone using a powertap on the climb.

Reservoir to Red Carpet Track
This section is where I learnt my first important lesson for the day, you do need to be up front if you want to ride these climbs otherwise you get caught behind alot of people and have no choice but legging it like I did. Walking/ pushing up these we were only doing about 3-4kph not fast, put if you could ride them you would only be doing maybe 4-6kph due to the at times 20% grades, yes 1 in 5 grades!
There are probably 6-8 separate pitches in this section before you are clear and out on the road/ fire trails for the transition to the red carpet loop.
Special mention goes to the fires trails before and after the section called "White knuckle" the trails are so badly eroded through here that are two drops of about 60cm on the trail. The name of the game is trying to downhill and not fall in the erosion areas and crash badly. This particular second of track claimed two people I know of and both ended the day with broken collarbones! It is also the section where I had my first minor bingle of the day...abit a low speed one. Now I'm not the good at high speed downhill, lack the confidence and skill so I was erring on the side of caution and I still managed to come down. But no damage done other then covering myself in a bit of dust.

The red carpet loop is the first piece of single track and good fun, not really much to say about this bit. Though I did take another tumble in here but again a low speed one....and covered myself in dust again! This loop seemed to fly by really quickly and I was soon into the transition area at Forrest. I smiled and waved at Heather and Wee Man, and rolled through here feeling good, I hadn't had any trouble with my back up to this point, wrists were OK, and as well hydrated so there was no need to stop.

Shotz Super Loop
This loop is supposed to be the pay off for all the climbing to get up to Forrest. Problem being that by the time you get here your too stuffed to really enjoy it. As can be seen from the time splits there is not alot of passing because everyone is so rooted! It consists of 20km of flowing single track with the occasional fire road haul. Nothing of significance happened through this section and I cleared it an returned to transition at Forrest. This time through I stopped and topped the hydra-pac up before setting out on the final loop.

Ayup Final Loop
This loop can be summed up in one word..."Pointless". It really is just there to get the distance up to 100km for the course. This section is made up of a 7km up hill haul on fire roads to some single track which then returns you back to Forrest via the Sledgehammer climb. Because I had paced myself well I was passing people left, right and centre through this section. I also managed to ride the Sledgehammer on the return as well.

Summary


2800m/8400ft total worth of climbing for the day

A good day that ended up being geared towards training more than racing. My finish time was 6:18:10hrs for 105th place in open mens. There were a couple of lessons learnt on the day, such as if you are going to be competitive stay towards the front for the climbs. Also a hydra pac with 3 litres of fluid makes for hard going, you need to use bottles. Also of note is that the top 10 riders all rode hardtails, so something to consider if there is a next time.....