Against the Clock

In a moment of madness during a cheesecake run, I've joined a team of mature aged folk who have decided to enter the Winter Challenge. It's held near here on August 22, in the township of Franklin, and consists of a 10km cross country run, 18km on a mountain bike, a 37km road cycle and a 10km flat water kayaking. We have dubbed ourselves the Huonville Sauntering Club, since because our pace around the course is not expected to be blistering. I'm doing the road cycling leg mainly because I'd be even more useless at any of the others. Hour-record track japes notwithstanding, I am not the bloke on the left.

Now 37km is a nice distance. A chap could do that in an hour and a half at a reasonable pace, perhaps a few minutes quicker if he tried rather hard. This chap anyway. So it probably wasn't wise to check the split times from last year's event. The top ten percent of riders averaged 36km/h, so I'm very possibly not going to finish up there. The median time was 1hr 12 min: an average speed of 31km/h. Now that might not seem fast to some people but it is about four kilometres an hour faster than any ride I've done on the road in the last six years - except a descent of Mt Wellington from Ferntree. It's faster than I've even done on the bloody track on a good day. Some training is clearly in order.

I've taken the old reliable Gatorskins off the Bianchi and put the fast and skittish 23mm Vittoria Rubino pros back on and pumped them up to 130psi. This weekend I'll ride the course and see whether the ghost of a time triallist lurks within me. I think I already know the answer to that, but it is supposed to be a bit of fun.

2393km so far this year.