Harbour Ride

Well, its a week late but here is an RR for the Harbour Ride.

For those not in the know, the Harbour Ride is an 80km ride which takes you through ChCh along the base of the hills out to Tai Tapu and Motukarara before heading into the hills and taking you along the bays towards Lyttelton and back up over the hill home to Sumner. For the locals its just good old Long Bays that we ride all the time! It is a nice ride though with its challenges.

It was a great day for a ride, not too hot but not cold, only downside was a headwind all the way out along the flat, bonus was we actually head a tailwind heading up Gebbies Valley, now that was a first! I had seeded myself in with the group taking 2 hours 30 to 2 hours 45 with a goal in mind of finishing in 2 hours 40. Last time I did this race I did it in 3 hours 5 mins so I was planning to take a reasonable chunk of time off and I was ok with this until I realised that it meant I had to maintain an average speed of 30kph over quite a hilly course! Gulp!

The race started off ok but slowly, we were forever having to slow up as the bunch was huge and we became quite congested when we had to slow at the corners etc, we nearly stopped at the end of the causeway which is about 1km into the race and again turning at Ferrymead and so on. That was a bit frustrating but at least people were communicating and using hand signals so that made things a bit easier and safer. Popped over the first wee hill at Murray Aynsley where heaps of people were there to spectate, was nice to see some friendly faces there, although I was pretty busy watching my wheel as there were people everywhere, had to call out 'hold your line' quite a bit as people were all over the place climbing! It was pretty smooth sailing from there on, the only thing that worried me was the size of our bunch heading out towards Tai Tapu, it was nice being dragged up the Halswell Downs in a big bunch (they have never been so easy!) but I wasn't keen on climbing or descending Gebbies in a big bunch as that is a pretty hairy descent at the best of times. Our bunch would have been 200-300 people, luckily it split when we turned at Tai Tapu so that made me feel a bit better and we still had heaps of people to work with to get to Gebbies so that was good. Gebbies was not too bad, I was chatting to people as I climbed which is a good sign that it wasn't too hard. They had a 30 piece orchestra playing at the top which was cool! Cruised around the rest of the bays, the bitches hurt but not as much as normal and I passed a few people on the climbs which was nice, 2 years ago I wasn't able to do that! Was great to get into Lyttelton and only have one hill left to go! There was a lone bag-piper at Windy Point when you head up Evans Pass, that was awesome, it always sends shivers down my spine. I gave him a big wave and a thanks! I feel like I flew up Evans, I passed masses of people which was fun, managed to do a PB on the climb as well (did one on Gebbies too!) so that was great! Pretty much had to TT back to MacCormacks Bay after descending Evans as there was no one near me, finally got caught by some people at Redcliffs so tagged onto them to the end which was a good plan as there was a head wind on the causeway of course! Finish time was 2 hours 40 mins and 33 secs, so I am taking that as 2 40! I had my speedo on ave speed and the first time it dropped under 30kph was just as we got to Governors Bay so that was ok.

Couple of bad crashes which wasn't so good. I saw a couple of girls I know stopped with someone at Corsair Bay, called out to see if everything was ok, realised I knew them and asked again but they were helping and hadn't crashed, seeing people I knew stopped on the side of the road gave me a huge panic attack tho and brought back memories of my crash at Brunner and I ended up biking along hardly able to breathe and pretty much crying. Took me a wee bit to pull myself back together but got there. Then after I finished the race the first thing I heard was the guy on the PA calling out for Geoff and asking him to come to the stage urgently. This didn't make sense to me cos I knew that he was at home?? They sounded like they really needed him for something so I kinda barged my way through the bike exit area and headed to the stage. I got stopped by a couple of people on the way who thought something must have happened to me since they were calling for Geoff. They looked pretty relieved that I was ok! Turned out Geoff's mate Iain had also put him down as a contact person and poor Iain had crashed. I worked out that it must have been him I saw on Evans, people were tending to him as I descended. His spokes broke on the descent and he crashed off, he has several broken ribs and a very bashed up elbow, his helmet did what it was supposed to do however and while it disintegrated his head is fine! I managed to get hold of Geoff and got him to call Iain's wife etc.