Around the Bay in a Day - the build up

I better break this one up into a few posts, but I do want to get some thoughts down about Sunday’s ride because it was one of the hardest things I’ve ever done and I’m feeling a great sense of achievement, as well as having learnt some interesting lessons about how to tackle these things.

Around the Bay in a Day is a series of bike rides of varying distances starting and finishing in Melbourne and going around the entire circumference of Port Phillip Bay. I had booked in along with some friends a few months ago when the longest ride I had ever tackled was 90km and that nearly killed me and took all day. The idea of doing 210km in one day seemed inconceivable at the time and it was only by booking and paying for it months in advance that I thought I would force myself to train and hopefully complete the thing!



Leading up to race weekend I had a mellow ride Thursday morning before work with Dan and Michael, and was tossing up going to Track on Thursday night but figured that absolutely hammering my legs two days before a 210km bike ride probably wasn’t the smartest move so I went for an hour tempo run instead. Friday was just yoga and swimming.

For some reason I had an awful sleep Friday night – I went to be too late and it was really hot, then woke up earlier than I needed to on Saturday morning and felt like a zombie. No matter, Sarah drove me to the airport and I met Dave and James and jumped the flight, we all napped and the bike arrived safely in one piece and those guys dropped me at Mel’s parent’s house in Parksville before heading to their hotel.

The boys had lunch with an old friend planned, so I let myself in, negotiated Austin the savage guard dog and grabbed a much needed nap. Then I put my bike back together and had a ride around Melbourne town on a glorious sunny afternoon.

Austin attacks!


Melbourne’s an amazing city to ride in – massive separated bike lanes on every second block, special bike traffic lights which let you go before the cars, almost completely flat topography and people riding bikes absolutely everywhere. I saw an old heritage building with a pool so dropped off the bike back home and jogged over to Melbourne City Baths for a few laps in the 30m pool which was kind of like swimming inside a shrunken down QVB – very cool.



Jogged home and fired up some pasta, then rode back to Southbank to have a drink with Dave and James and the other 8 guys and gals who were all set to ride in the other direction around the bay the next day. Apparently anti-clockwise (Geelong first) is the popular direction and so those guys booked it quite early. When we tried to book it a week or two later it was full up even though they take something like 4,000 riders and this was still 5 months before the event! So Dan, Mark, Andrew and myself were taking the less favoured clockwise route via Sorrento (although in the end there wasn’t much of a difference).

Anyway I pedalled home around 9pm, prepared my gear for the next day and crashed right out in anticipation of a big day tomorrow…