The ride went off at a shaky start. First both Aaron and I forgot our numbers where we rode to the end of his street so therefore, we had to quickly ride back and got the bibs. The ride to Sydney park proven to be tricky as the roads were not smooth and the cars were not that friendly (Sydney). Even at 5:45am, the cars were everywhere, maybe driving their bikes to the starting point.
We tried to start as a group as much as we could but there were approx 10,000 cyclist on the roads for this event, there was no way that we could keep together riding on the bike lanes and having so many traffic lights on the way. The ride out of Sydney was tricky. There were some nice hills and due to the mud, it was hard to cleat back into the peddle.
After one of the large hills, I stopped at one of the drink stops to take a photo of the scenery. The views were amazing!
There were a few accidents on the way into Wollongong which halted the ride for a while at some of the intersections. I lost the group even further in front as there were more descents which I was not comfortable about going down.
My entire trip took about 4:20 this included the meeting point in the morning as well as the scenic stop and the traffic stops. There were some areas where I just got tired and was not peddling at a very high speed or cadence.
Overall, the weather was wonderfiul but my lack of training showed. Will I do this event again next year? I would have to say no. It was great to experience it once but next year, I will set my sights on other events. It costs too much to do this event if you include flights (and accomodation if required) - my flights cost me about $450. Its an expensive 90km ride! Glad that I have done this event and now I have an NDY cycling jersey which I can wear (its actually an awesome one).
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