A few personal bests yesterday

Yesterday I rode in the Bicycle Queensland annual Brisbane to the Gold Coast 100km mass ride. I started the day by riding the 19.2km (and 467 calories) from our place in to the start at Grey St. It was quite strange to set off before dawn – I really did need the new batteries in my front light, which normally I only use if riding after dawn, or around dusk (and that’s rare). I took it fairly easy, but still managed an average speed of 24.6km/h. For the big one, I’d entered in the “barely moving” 20-25km/h average speed group, even though I knew I could go a bit faster. I rationalised it by thinking “this will probably be my average across the whole course, because I’ll get quite tired the further we go.”

However, I did a fair bit better than that:

The first section along the Busway was a lot of fun, we had a few rolling inclinations and somewhat faster descents. The last time I’d done this ride I was on my old (heavy) mountainbike with slick tyres. I was also not nearly as fit – so it was quite a grind. I had a blast and managed to do the first 40km in about 1h20mins – my very best time over 40k. After I’d had a break at the rest stop I managed to find T and his rather fast riding mates, so we set off together.. and I got dropped on the first corner.

Still, I did manage to keep a reasonably good pace for that second 40k (1h41m moving time) and met up with T and his crew only about 10 minutes after they’d arrived at the second rest stop. I was feeling excited, and happy and ENERGISED! My perception at that point was that I’d only dropped back by perhaps 5 minutes over the second 40k, perhaps that’s because I was having such a great time riding.

For the last segment we set off together again, then T and the crew dropped me about 2km along. I felt pretty happy about that (2km) because it meant I still had quite a bit of ‘go’ left in my legs and lungs, and those guys are fast. T had mentioned that they were expecting to average over 30km/h and before yesterday I hadn’t thought I could do that unless I was going along the riverside bikepath with no headwind.

I was, therefore, really delighted to see that I caught up with them around Hope Island (one of the guys came off his bike and they lost some time), and I managed to keep up with them for the rest of the ride (about 16-17km). We were going fast, and I loved it. It was hot, we were riding as a group, at speed, pushing pushing pushing to get to the finish. I kept up, I exceeded my expectations and I think I rode very well.

As you can see from the screenshot above, I had an average speed over the whole course of 29.9km/h. Next year (and in fact, for the Coot-tha Challenge) I’ll be entering the 25-30km/h group. I know I can do it. If I train well and hard enough, I might be able to enter the 30+km/h group.

Now I just need to train on Coot-tha itself (as well as the wilds of Brookfield) so that I can make it happen.