My first ride back from Busselton... Hmmm....Perhaps it shouldn't have been so long between drinks, so to speak, but, well, it's been Christmas, and it was an Ironman... surely I deserved a few weeks off...?
We set out from Maleny on a 90Km ride. It certainly seemed manageable, probably because I hadn't looked at the profile...
When we turned off after Kenilworth to take Obi Obi Rd across to Mapleton, we knew it was going to be fairly uphill. What an understatement! I'm not good with gradients, but the 15% bit was easy in comparison to what followed.
Just one other was with me on the "climb" so I stayed on for as long as I could. Which wasn't that long given my recent cycling hiatus. A few cars passed us, but we resolved not to accept "outside assistance" (after all, that would be cheating) so instead we took our shoes off to get more traction on the steep incline. This made it seem marginally easier at least...
We regrouped at Mapleton to find that all but 4 of the group had resorted to pushing our bikes up the neverending climb. Kudos to James who managed the feat on his time trial bike! How, I'm sure I'll never know.
The view from the top of the range are stunning. I had to stop and snap a shot to share here. It's not quite the top of the world, but these kinds of rewards for hours of toil are pretty special.
