Holy Mother, the IMOZ course was easier!
It's all relative I suppose, I was fitter back then.
By all means it was as hard/challenging as we both thought it would be. A 3km climb about 120km into the ride was hard enough, but no one told us it was going to be undulating for the rest of the ride!!

The boy and I went in fits and starts in terms of how we were feeling. It took me a good hour to warm up. I felt pretty good with 15km to go and wanted to power home, but had to pull back because he was doing it hard. That said he had plenty of rest breaks on top of hills waiting for me!

Yes it would have been interesting for us to ride this alone, but we achieved what we set out to do which was finish before the pros.

Train on more hills. Here in lies the problem, riding the tour was a Christmas present, had I known I was going to be riding I would have started training seriously with far more than a month to go!

There were a few more hills to contend with after the finish. But then there was plentiful amounts of powerade (I'd only had water during the ride + powerbars) and lunch. Feed me!

We sat around trying to down as much fluid as we could and then headed down to the stretch were we could see the peleton come through. That was pretty freakin' exciting!


Lack of balanced leg strength. Fitness & being over my ideal playing weight!


The organisers need to consider Interstate/OS entrants, we were unable to pre-register the day beforehand, which would have given us extra sleep. We found we were ill informed about the race start (only getting an email the night before the start).

That said, there were plenty of volunteers, the Police escort along the course meant we had no trouble with traffic when riding and really it was a great homour to be riding exactly the same course as the pros. I'd go back for sure!