Lessons from Peaks Challenge: Part 1 – Best Laid Plans

Cycling and Life…the two are interconnected. So, when training and then actually attempting the Peaks Challenge Falls Creek, it stands to reason that I should have discovered a few things about life along the way. I did. These are those things…

Idealistic plans for long rides in the hills…

I had a plan. Well, as part of my Peaks training, I had a few plans. It is Week 7 of 16 weeks training and although I still have some serious training to do, I want to see if I can ride the Peaks distance – that is, see if I can clock the 200 kilometre mark – and see how I feel with the elevation – over 4,000 metres of climbing. But, when temperatures for a week hover on or around 40 degrees, plans don’t necessarily eventuate in the way we suppose. I had ridden the road from Bright to Mount Hotham twice before but never with the potential of extreme heat impacting the riding surface.

Still, I had a plan. Plans often begin with the best possible scenarios, in the best possible conditions with the best possible outcomes. My plan involved riding to Harrietville, ascending Mount Hotham, riding to Omeo, on to Falls Creek (the back way) and back over Tawonga Gap home to Bright. This would take me a whole day, with plenty of scenic stop-off points and leisurely pedalling amidst delightful alpine panoramas – something akin to the cycling version of a Sound of Music Tour – yes, the hills are alive! Plans are idealistic, plans are optimistic, usually, until they are put into action.

I feel this optimism colliding with reality, the amorphous forming substance, the plan materialising, as I make good time in the twenty kilometres to Harrietville. Yes, it was warm, but not too hot yet. I’d had the best escort for the first 5kms; Kaye felt the need to be part of the grand scheme right at the start. And then I’d managed that magpie-treacherous leg from Freeburgh through Smoko to Harrietville without incident, despite the random birds chuckling on power lines and in branches of trees, not entirely sure in the summer heat if I was a helmet-bird threat. Still, I’d hunkered down, ready for any out-of-season battle, but nothing had eventuated; the birds in their wisdom too hot to ruffle feathers. When I’d left Bright at 8am the temperature was already in the high 20s and seemed to be planning another overwhelming venture, like my high-country riding plan, up and into the extreme zone, 40 degrees and climbing, consistent with the past few days and reaching that point at which things in life that you thought would be resilient, stoic and incorruptible simply wilt. So, the relative cool of the mountains ahead seemed worth the long, steady climb. I launch into the first steep section of the Great Alpine Road – the climb out of Harrietville with its 2km windy section at about 7% gradient, reminding me that I’m back, I’ve a plan and myself and the hills are alive. I’m feeling strong and ready for the challenge of the next 30kms of climbing.

This is where the plan gets interesting. I round the curve into The Meg – a steep section of about 600ms, with 300-400ms of about a 10% climb. I emerge on the north-eastern side of the climb and it seems that the intensity of the extreme heat over the previous 4 or 5 days has pretty much melted the bitumen. The surface is oozing and sticky and, in a bid to make the road drive-able, the road has been topped with smatterings of small bits of gravel. I try to stay on the outer-most side of the road to get some traction and avoid picking up clumps of the road with my tyres. This is awkward because I’m trying to climb whilst attempting to avoid the worst of the melted lava-like road surface. Easy, that is as long as I try to stay off the gravel, ride along the yellow line on the outside, hope that cars don’t come past and spit gravel over me. Best laid plans…I ponder if this is going to be sustainable. I was originally considering the possibility that if the road was not viable to ride, I could just turn around. But it seems persistence is the key now; once you start, it is difficult to simply turn around. So, this attempt, amidst the stickiness and gravel, continues for another 10 or 15kms before my road issues settle somewhat.

I make it to the top of Hotham in a new record time – 2hrs 11mins – and relax. I get off my bike to find some water and the road sticks to my cleats. In fact, my cleats seem to sink into the bitumen. Darn it – I hate it when you get bitumen on your cleats! The road is made for winter and the continual hot summer days have taken their toll, even here at 1,800ms altitude. There’s no drinking water. An alpine worker, someone who looks like they belong here, takes pity – could be related to the look on my face due to the cleats/bitumen issue – and he invites me in to the staff kitchen to fill up my water bottles.

Change of plan.

Sipping water and munching a Clif bar, I head onward. This next stretch will take me from Hotham to Omeo – I’d attempted this once before, broken my derailleur half way and had to be rescued by Kaye. Now I am determined! Yes, the deteriorating road is a little bit of an issue, but when you’re riding there is more often than not some issue. And I am a rider with a plan! But this section is arduous. Whilst overall this is a downhill part of the ride – plenty of long, steep downhill sections – there are also a few longish climbs. These, combined with some short sharp rises make it still a difficult ride. I manage the 55 kilometres in two and a half hours and finally arrive in Omeo. Omeo greets me with a heated victory breeze that blows warm air from right to left. It is warm and windy – the temperature here is about 40 degrees. I re-hydrate, rest, re-hydrate, consider options, re-hydrate. Two and a half hours of riding with the temperature going from about 28 up to 40 degrees and two – although compassionately filled – water bottles was clearly not enough. And this heat has taken its toll on me. Again I think of my options. It is a little too late to continue on towards the back of Falls and I haven’t ridden that way before…I don’t know what is ahead, but the return trip to Dinner Plain and Hotham would be pretty tough – this is one of the Seven Peaks challenges, after all. What to do? I decide to change plans and head straight back the way I’ve come, the way I now know.

What plan? Survival…

With salt all over my jersey, seemingly no strength left in my legs, 100kms from home with plenty of hills to overcome, my original plan dissolves into a singular goal of getting home in a reasonable time and all-round general survival. This section back to Dinner Plain is relentless. It is the kind of uphill where you cannot believe that there is any higher to go, but the road keeps going. I am absolutely drained as I limp – in a riding sense – into Dinner Plain, in the hope of finding sugar. The pub is open. I park my bike. I carefully get off the bike. I hobble into the bar. I ask, in a hoarse voice, for a coke. Coke has never tasted so good.

All downhill from here…but, no, not really…

The ability for the human body to recover is remarkable. With such small things as SUGAR and CAFFEINE I’m back on my bike and feeling better, like I can at least take the remaining 60 kms to Bright with a relaxed positivity that might mean I get all the way back. First to Mt Hotham and back up past the resort. The bitumen issue has changed and worsened slightly. The road is not as sticky but there are chunks of bitumen torn out of the road by car tyres now precariously lolling at the edges of the road. This is a definite chink in the plan, that optimistic, newly-modified plan of rolling all the way back to Bright. Large bits of bitumen, some up to the size of a clenched fist, sit on the roadside with holes of where they came from breaking up the main car wheel tracks. I take it slowly, I forfeit speed for survival.

I make it to Harrietville without losing too much traction and without coming off the bike. For some reason the cars that pass exude a sense that I am somewhat of a nuisance, like a mozzie buzzing around in the dark. Generally, I am unexpected, therefore noticed only when too close and travelling at a speed that means late braking – not good on a windy, gravel-topped, pock-marked road. Geez, the road out of Harrietville is nice, flat, purposeful. I have 22kms back to Bright, which I realise is still an hour or so riding and it is starting to get dark. The heat has returned – I felt it rise as I descended and, now that there is an end in sight, I ramp up the speed and go flat out. Past the tumbling Ovens River, past Magpie Alley and Smoko, through Freeburgh and Germantown and back into Bright. It is dark as I turn into the road to the caravan park and meet Kaye walking towards me. If I’ve made it to Kaye it must mean the ride is over and I’ve made it! I’d ridden from Bright to Omeo and back. 216kms. 4,282m elevation gain. It was an epic ride.

The ride had taken 10hrs 17mins. But I’d been gone for 12hrs 24mins. Not the plan I’d started out with but, like life, plans change, life tests us, we adapt and, mostly, we prevail.

Lesson number one from Peaks Challenge – never leave home with a plan that you can’t change.