The Cloudride Prologue is In summary, a good but very hard race – I scratched, wrongly, here’s what happened and why for others information and so that I hopefully I won’t make the same mistakes again 😀
Intro
I have been looking forwrd to this ride for months, it is my first gravel race. I am an Audax rider and regularly do rides of many hundreds of KMs per day so the distance doesn’t scare me – the possible technical mtb biking does.
Day 1
Today was gorgeous riding, nearly 20km/hr average despite hills. Mostly on fire-trails, a bit of corrugations but nothing too bone jarring. It was a long day though and food was difficult, the small towns on the way through had mostly no general store or servo’s – what was there had very little supplies. Some towns had pubs but the cooking hours were very limited.
The ongoing rain, more technical tracks (read massively washed out roads/double track) and very steep hills meant progress was much, much slower than I had expected. Myself and two others I was riding with were starving and were dreading missing our dreamed of dinner at Nerriga. I finally managed to get phone connection to the fantastic Nerriga pub ad they offered to make some burgers for us to collect, later, we only had 30km to get there and an hour and half. Two and a half hours later of VERY hard riding we arrived, the burgers were fantastic. Without them it would have been extremely difficult. Thank you Nerriga Hotel!
The pub also offered us to sleep in their shed, if was only 30km to the next campsite but with heavy rain coming and what we knew would be a very crowded small shelter for bivys the shed was appealing. Unfortunately it is almost impossible to sleep after this sort of exercise, after 3 hours of trying we all gave up and hit the road again about 3:30am. Passing the massively overcrowded, wet, sleepers at Saraffas campsite vindicated the decision. Again though, almost no sustaining food, I had a small porridge sach̬ and a muffin Рnothing else had been available. The others had less.
Images
Day 2
The decision to go on was a mistake, staying another 5 hours and attempting to sleep would have been very frustrating but might have meant some sleep; and the pub opened at 8AM for breakfast – with food, the real problem.
The morning was tired and hard. The hills immediate and were cycling inside a cloud, everything was slippery.
The road turned very difficult, a lot was unridable on any bike – definitely on a gravel bike. The tracks were covered in road ballast, nearly head sized boulders some well over 20% – pushing the bike was really hard. It made for extraordinarily slow progress, most people were averaging about 5km/hr recorded, but in reality much slower as Garmin’s don’t record below about 3km/hr.
Between the pushes was some gorgeous scenery, around the Budawangs particularly is stunning. I am very used to long rides where there are service stations or small towns with some sort of corner shops. The only food I, and the people I was riding with had was electrolytes and sugary snacks – no protein. It was getting hard.
The main issues were absolutely 0 sleep and minimal food. I was riding, starving, being unable to stomach more sugar so I knew I was just riding on body fat. My heart rate was hardly going about 110 on the biggest hills, mostly around 80, no matter how hard i pushed – a sure sign that my legs were out of available blood sugar – and that’s how they felt, no strength.
On the way to the Wog Wog campsite at about 2:30 PM I saw a sign for a road path to the next town, Braidwood, rather than the 94km of pushing through the same sort of gravel boulders. I cooked my last dehydrated meal, bumped it up with a some emergency instant mashed potatoes to share, but it really did nothing for energy – the legs were empty and all I had left was sugar.
By this stage I was still riding with Honey, the other companion at the pub shed, Flip, having gone ahead at 2AM. She had already decided to scratch at Braidwood because of the lack of solid food and water, the sound of a decent meal was too tempting so I joined her for the “short cut” . That was the end of the race.
The ‘shortcut’ was only 40km but was steep, hot and exposed bitumen. The real path would have been easier, although much longer. Probably arrival at Braidwood would have been 2 or 3AM and hungry.
I was contemplating trying to get some supplies the next day, then riding back to the exit point to complete it – but, after resting with a proper meal, and knowing I had 40km to get back, then about 130 or so of similar bike-push it wasn’t tempting. My friends I was staying with Canberra offered to pick us up from Braidwood, and so I made the decision to abort.
I am regretting that sitting hear writing, I think I could have made it to Braidwood but it would have been terrible riding, 90ish km of very hard tracks with only fruit lollies and no chance of some dinner. I did the cardinal sin of bike-packing – made the decision to scratch without some form of sleep or at least a power nap.
Would I do it again? This race, no, or at least no with this bike. It needed much wider tires. Did I like the type of race, absolutely, I’m hanging out for the next one.
Images
I learnt a fair bit from this race:
- The most important, carrying some form of Protein is vital, it just becomes impossible to stomach sugar after a while without Protein to sustain it. I have always heard in interviews with ultra-cyclists – these events aren’t cycling contests, they are eating contests. I had absolutely agree.
- Try to find out more details on the route, I had tried but there was nothing to be found. 47mm tires on a gravel bike was in no way enough – people were breaking full suss mountain bikes.
- Try anything to find out the condition of any local towns; just because there is a service station, corner store or cafe doesn’t mean they have any food available more than a piece of carrot cake or similar. If the town even still has the shops.
- Carrying the water filter was a good and vital decision, even if there seems to be plenty of good water available- some times there isn’t.
- The stove and aeropress was heavy, even a titanium cup and (awesome) Soto wind breaker. It was worth every gram, the coffee and warm dehydrated meal was such a change from sugary crap.
- Carry an emergency extra water bladder. I had 1.5l in a backpack (great decision!) and with another 1.5l of Electrolytes. This was find until I couldn’t stomach the electrolyte water, then suddenly I didn’t have enough fresh water on me.
- I saw some people trying to ‘just push through’ and not sleep, not even carrying sleeping kit. They scratched. Just because in previous years the course could be done in 25-26hours doesn’t mean it can this year – slight changes in the route and road conditions. The fast this year was around 27 hours.
- Some race organisers are sarcastic, or at least overly optimistic in track notes – consider that might be the case when reading them.
