Day 3 – The big ride

Bike 255km Kaikoura to Nelson
Run 50mins

Sometimes we have to bend the rules on epic camp and today was one of those days. Normally we have to swim, bike and run each day but today we ran out of time to swim given the brutal bike – don’t worry though, campers still have to do the swim by catching it up later in the camp in order to achieve “camp completion”.

255km is a long way, throw in a ton of headwind and a lot of serious climbing and you are in for a long day. Last year I rode solo for 300km but had very short stops, today was a hell of a lot tougher than that. Sanity prevailed and we rode nice and easy for the first few hours. Soon after some tempo riding on the climbs split the bunch in two before our 2nd aid station. We then regrouped in Blenheim (129km) and rode a fantastic chain gain effort to lunch in Havelock (175km). I think we all got a good buzz out of this. We were battling into a head wind at times but the group was rolling through perfectly with each person spending just a few seconds on the front. This required full on concentration by everyone and meant you didn’t get a chance to think about the pain of fatigue – we were at lunch in no time.

Post lunch we had around 30km to the top of the KOM at the Rye saddle - the fun and games started at about 20km with some tempo riding. Bevan (Mullie) who arrived half way through the ride tried to give Chris a big push for the KOM but couldn’t shake him. Solid effort by Madman for 3rd. I came over about 6th which was OK – from here on in I was in cruise mode but the thermometer was going sky high. We had one last climb of the Whangamoas (spelling??) – this climb was ruthless and very very hot. Sometimes on this camp you really do ask yourself questions (came I make it?, what are you doing??....), breaking through these times and coming back the next day is what Epic is all about. We finally made the summit and had a wonderfully long descent down the other side. With no aid station in sight we guzzled down some water at a store and had a lovely tail breeze home for the rest of the ride. That has been rarity on this camp.

One of my renowned sayings on epic camps is “kiwi rollers” to describe relentless, tough rolling hills. Today’s new saying is “sea breezes” – if we had sea breezes which was the forecast today I’d hate to see mild to heavy winds, it was very tough at times.

Another 50min zonbieathlon finished me off. BUT I finished the day feeling a hell of a lot better than I started so things are picking up.

A funny incident today. When speaking to a member of the public they thought we were a bit crazy when we said we were riding to Nelson but then followed up with “at least you are not going over the Takaka hill”, my response “don’t worry we do go over there the next day”. Molina will be bringing his A game tomorrow so it will be interesting to see who can match him on the 16km climb (he beat all the pro’s up there last time).