Just putting down that we should do another overnighter.
Thinking at this stage June 7/8 - the Queen’s Bday weekend.
So just one night - at about 270ks total over the two days. And this leaves us 8 weekends and 3 public holidays to train up!
(don’t worry - i’m pretty soft ATM)
[and that gives everyone June 9 to recover]
I’m thinking a place called Killarney just over the Main Range. Will involve a bit of climbing (155km), but day 2 (115km) would be much easier and have an awesome section of downhill and a train home from Ipswich.
Built a house out there years ago,
Great area but don’t expect open arms in town they kinda don’t like new folk haha
Great waterfalls though If I remember correctly
yeah - ok we can push it back a week. but not sure if Tom can make it now.
we can have a saturday morning training session soon and we can go through logistics and stuff.
So doing a mt mee loop on saturday. see "saturday morning rides thread.
will be a good opportunity to talk logistics for this ride.
Only about 5 weekends to go so if you haven’t been training for hills - get going, it’s not too late.
Personally I’ve been a lot of time at coot-tha for the last 3 weekends. HILLS BRINGS THE SKILLZ
No support car. we carry all our overnight gear (don’t bring anything you might not need - you won’t need it.)
I’ll bring an iPhone charger and a USB cord and yoose can share.
There’s two accom options - the pub, and a Motel about 250m down the road from pub.
it will be COLD at night. Like if you look up BOM it will be roughly the temperature of Warwick. Thinking it might get in the single digits degrees at night and be just in double digits when we ride out on the sunday.
In saying that arm-warmers and leg-warmers are remarkably efficient. But a light rain-jacket or long sleeve t-shirt as well are probs a necessity.
THE RIDE
I haven’t done this ride, I haven’t even driven it (not past Boonah anyway). It looks tough, but manageable. We are essentially travelling over the main range (the great dividing range). There are two stages to the climb. Some sections look quite steep.
Day 1 is over 3000m of climbing - and I am guessing about 1600m of that is in the last 40ks. It will be an elevation record for me
There is not much food or water options past boonah. In the last 70ks there is only 1 cafe - at the very top of the main range climbs. I will make sure this cafe is open on day we go!
at the top, near the cafe is a 400m (return) walk to the Queen Mary Falls which is an option. We can just dump the bikes and take the stroll. These falls look pretty impressive on pics I’ve seen. Might just be a great way of getting all that lactic acid outta our legs too. Plus a great photo op!
Day 2 we climb for a bit but then it’s mostly downhill and we have the train at Ipswich.
classical! dude - i don’t wanna dumb it down - it will be tough, but if you can comfortably ride 100k and can do a coot-tha in around 12mins without spewing — you’ll be fine.
