Sydney to the Gong

It poured rain and stormed hard overnight and still looked a bit iffy in the morning, but it wasn’t actually raining at the time so at 5.30am I jumped on the bike and cruised the 5km to Mosman to meet Dan and Andrew. The plan was to ride out to the start at St Peters (adding a few km by going to Mosman and back), then do the 90km Gong Ride and go for a 10km run at the end with Mark, Andrew and Dan.

However Dan had injured his leg a couple of days before so couldn’t run, Mark couldn’t make it to the ride at all in the end and Andrew never got around to dropping off his running shoes with Juliet (Dan’s wife) so it would have been just me and I wasn’t sure how I felt about that.

Anyway I met Dan and saw his sexy brand new (for him, it was 2nd hand off eBay) red specialised s-works triathlon / time trial bike.

Andrew joined us a few minutes later and then Marty rode up from Balgowlah (we were supposed to meet at the bridge) and we all took off. On the ride in I saw no less than 6 shirtless guys stumbling home from various pubs, one guy in nothing but a pair of tartan boxer shorts (god knows where his clothes went) whose fully-dressed girlfriend was trying to talk into getting a cab, and one zombie… or at least a young bloke looking like death with his arms straight out groaning and lurching towards us!

At one point in North Sydney Marty reefed on the brakes and pulled up short, nearly causing Dan to pile into him. We were like “What’s wrong???” when he reached down to the ground and came up with his eyes wide and a big wad of $80 cash clutched in his hand. I guess some poor drunken bastard had lost it while pulling out his mobile phone or getting into a cab. Marty generously doled it out to all of us and we pedalled on under a good omen for the day!

It turned less promising when the rain began to fall exactly as we rolled up to the start line… We met Brad there along with Jen and Daniel and Strauss which was our full complement, then off we went straight away around 6.40am.

The rain came down harder and harder and for the first hour at least it was pretty continuous and a little irritating as you couldn’t follow too close to anyone’s wheel without copping a face-full of filthy road water roostertailing back into your face. Glasses on and they were covered in a film of dirty water, glasses off and it went straight into your eyes, so I don’t know what was worse!

Then Marty got a puncture in the first few kms and we had an emergency tube change.

Going through the city out to Botany and beyond is always fairly average, the start is crowded, the roads aren’t too prepossessing and with the added rain it wasn’t the loveliest ride, but it was still fun to be part of a huge cycling event and surrounded by bikes as far as you could see in front and behind.

Marty noticed his rear wheel rim had a split in the metal about Engadine and it would have been way too dangerous to continue so he pulled out (good thing too as his rear tyre exploded shortly afterwards on his way home). Thankfully we were only a couple of hundred metres from a train station at the time.

The rest of us stopped at the 25km mark at the designated rest stop and had the delicious free muffins and enjoyed the easing of rain and the first glimpse of sun! I also ran into a mate of mine called Brendan doing the ride on his mountain bike and ended up spending the next 20km or so riding with and chatting to him which was a really good catch up. His new website is awesome and a really good idea to link riders in Sydney who want to ride together or share their favourite routes: Gutter Monkey

By the time we hit the Royal National Park the sun was peeking through the trees and the road was dry and so we had a glorious section of riding through the undulating hills of the park.

Straight after the national park there was the view from Stanwell Tops





The descent from Stanwell Tops was awesome as usual and then the next section of cliffside roads, including the spectacular Seacliff Bridge, was really sensational.

We hit some strong gusting headwinds after Thirroul so spent a bit of time in an aerodynamic tuck, but it was all pretty flat at this stage so easy riding to the finish – 90km from the start. There we met up with Juliet and the girls (Liv and Ella) and hung out for a little while on the grass. It was sunny and hot at this point and I was keen for more exercise, but I didn’t really fancy taking off for an hour long run all by myself.

At this point Brad said he was going to ride back to Waterfall (exactly halfway back, at the beginning of the national park before the ordinary roads through Sydney) so I couldn’t let him go it alone and decided to join him. It turned out to be the best part of the ride! We had the road pretty much to ourselves on that side, the weather was gorgeous, there was a steady stream of riders coming the other way and I think the views were even better going that way.

There were two killer hills however which really sucked it out of me. The first was the steep ascent back up to Stanwell Tops. Then there was 10 or 15km of fantastic riding through the national park where we were literally the only ones on the road right in the middle of the bush. Such a good feeling. Although tempered by the fact that my legs were rooted and I knew we had the final climb out to negotiate!

A 5 km climb from the creek all the way back up to Waterfall train station. At that point I’d ridden almost 150km for the day and was really feeling it, Brad took off like a shot and I never saw him again until he was waiting at the top for me, so I just popped it into an easy gear and ground away slowly, making sure to savour the feeling of being alone in the bush on a sunny day at the end of a great ride.

It ended, as all hills eventually do, and we jumped on the waiting train back to Sydney, tired and hungry but very very happy.

At home I grabbed a feed, played with the cats, took a 20 minute power nap and then went down to North Sydney pool for about 2.5kms of swimming which felt sensational after the ride. What a Sunday.