Audax Deliverance

The Audax Deliverance 200

I have been doing a lot more long distance riding lately, often Audax endurance rides. I had planned to do the 200,300,400 and 600km series this year but Covid-19 came along and killed everyone’s plans. Rides more than 150km from home have recently become allowed, so after a quick coffee at 5AM I was off to Fernvale to do the 223km Deliverance, aptly named after 2 months or so of solo riding.

My old Specialized Gillet zip had died a couple of weeks ago and I yesterday replaced it with a lightweight Rapha one. Like all Rapha gear I have tried, great quality, even if the are pricey and have weird sizing – is everyone in Europe a skeleton? Right from sunrise everything was covered in a  really thick, cold, wet fog – beautiful but freezing. Lightweight gear and sun shades instead of arm warmers turns out to not be the best choice before sunrise West of Brisbane, particularly with no sun pushing through the fog to warm it up.  Time to turn the legs over to warm up!

I very soon discovered something about this ride, somehow it seemed to have much more UP than the profile had looked on RWGPS! I got very warm, very quickly, going up – shame about the windchill coming back down though 😀

The first checkpoint was 70km down the road at Kilroy, I discovered a fantastic cafe, 3C Coffee & Co – absolutely delicious coffee and a toasted sandwich, just what I needed for energy over the next few hills. I didn’t realize then that the next ‘hill’ was actually 10km of non-stop 8-9% climbing over the Conondale Range.