Pete & Toby created the Glendhu Hundy last year - following a simple format for 2024 - 101km at Bike Glendhu any way you like, in one day from 9-5pm.
Commitment 100%
Preparedness 45%
Optimism 88%
With those numbers it was only a case of making my usual gear list, finding 2 x extra batteries, race day food, managing sponsorship commitments and generally avoiding the fact that a 25 km ride once a week probably wasn't enough training.
Game plan was great- Alex said he rode every trail in the park last year, so I naturally assumed that was 100 km done.
Not so ! only 81km...so I had to imagine another 20km on top of that.
Hmm.
Race day food - Alex was raving about Pure Race Fuel - I tried some Thursday and had a squiffy tummy all night, so of course I rolled the dice and drank 3 bottles of it on the day.......that did not bode well in the next 12 hours. Spray, wipe, repeat.
Arrived on time, faffed around then whoah ! 12 mins till kick off. Frantic me !
Race briefing was running late and we weren't about to be. So we gapped it ....
A 4km climb put us at Jacks (about a third of the way up the mtn) with backpacks full of food and a spare battery to swap out as necessary.
I got my first serve of the day from Annabel when I started filling my bottles -
"We haven't got time for that, I carted 7 full bottles up the hill in my backpack! Let's go "
Managing the battery consumption was a precarious balancing act for me. All Annabel had to do was pedal her muscle bike !
Two summits gave us reasonable distance but on balance too much climbing.
Throughout the day we hardly saw anyone which was surprising / not surprising and the few times we exchanged pleasantries we were behind by a few kms.
After 4 hours or so we'd chipped out 50 km and I'm ready for lunch, but it wasn't a sit down all you can eat affair; more fill your bottles on the fly, stuff your pockets with gels and bars and get moving with half a ham and cheese sandwich in your hand.
Annabel was like a Swiss clock on a Swiss train running on time.. So we promptly departed.......
My phone dies at this point, so worry that Strava wouldn't know about the ride starts to set in...
We kind of settled into a routine of a figure 8 with easy climbing, flat out descending, more climbing, descending and the long climb back to Jacks to do it all over again.
With my second battery just about done Annabel showed Alex, Toby & Henry she was a force to be reckoned on the downhills - leaving me in their dust.
Pete chipped out 75km and had to deal with a medical emergency in the other Island, so his day was done; but had just started.
This was a bit of a bummer, with little I could do with low power from the battery and me...but it was hardly a dark patch.
Rallying back at Jacks the lads stopped again and we smashed another downhill back to Base to collect my third battery.
We had 10 km to go but Joe, Carl & Dave were already done for the day. Solid effort lads.
Up the hill again to grab our backpacks followed by a quick decision on our last trail which was overturned not by me which meant we had to do more uphill lest we come up short.
Then it was done !
102km in the bag and high fives all round. Not the fastest, not the slowest, friends at the start and the end, no crashes or mechanicals.
I call it a great success.
B Social hosted the very low key prizegiving while the smack talk flowed. Toby had spent $5 on prizes and we were stoked to take out the best team award and joy of joys - Dumb & Dumber on dvd for our efforts !
Most immediate thoughts are that this event was about as tough as the Whaka 100 which in my world is currently beyond me, but somehow I thought this would be a cake walk as at least I was on my ebike.
Full credit to Annabel on many levels for spending all day riding with me - jeez we have only ridden together a couple of times previously. Plus she rode her Amish bike at talking pace uphill and unleashed warp-speed on the downs. And her snacks were 101% better than mine. Especially the fruit cake.
I'll be reflecting on this for a while and hopefully it continues to fuel the enthusiasm through the oncoming winter.
Stats:
Food: muesli and coffee for breakfast. On the bike - 2 Gels, 1 Ems powerbar, 3 bottles of what I hoped would be the magic powder but turned out to be a shit show in the following 24 hours,
2 bottles of water, 1 ham cheese and onion sammie. Recovery food: another HCO sammie, couple of bevvies, fried rice for din dins. more water, much more water...
Distance 102km, moving time 7.04, total time 7.5 hrs, elevation gained 2678 metres, average speed 14.5 km
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