Day 15 – An Epic Day!
Balclutha to Bluff – 191km
New Zealand certainly lived up to its Epic billing in terms of awesome scenary and weather today, with a welcome return of 20 degree sunshine and even some Easterly winds which gave us a nice little tailwind push for the last half of the days ride – all this combined with some great banter from everyone gave the camp a “last day at school feel”. Although there was still quite a bit of work to do with 3 pretty solid climbs to attend to early on in the day in The Catlins region of the South Island.
The landscape again served up a treat with first rolling landscape’s which wouldn’t look out of place in Somerset, back in the UK on a sunny day, but this then merged into some fantastic climbs which had us amongst the low lying clouds in the early part of the day, the descents were twisty and fast, with great surfaces, gave us one last opportunity to really crank the bikes over through the corners, 60-70kph wasn’t unusual on these.
The legs were behaving for most of the day too, feeling relatively fresh, the real top end has gone for the moment, due to the massive volume of training, but that’ll come back nicely over the next 6-8 weeks, as everything recovers.
Oh yeah...before I forget my gearing of choice for the camp was a 39/52 with a 12-25 cassette out back, wouldn’t have minded a 27T at times, but what doesn’t kill you will make you stronger...although at the time....???
The whole team re-grouped at lunchtime, very leisurely, as we made really good time on the final day due to the favourable conditions and we all rolled into Bluff as a Team – great stuff, and felt a little like the Tour de France guys on the final day on the Champs Elysee, no champagne on the bikes (that would come at the end), but we did have an ice cream stop due to a “flat” in the pack, amazingly an ice cream shop (in the middle of nowhere) was right next to where we pulled up – genius!
Once we arrived in Bluff, there is a famous hill called.......”Bluff Hill” , leading up to a weather station at the top, the climb averages 18% and kicks in spots to 25%, over 3km, a few of the group went up while those with slightly inappropriate gears waited at the bottom, the news on their return....the “Prestige” climb was won by the KOM Jersey dominator, Clas.....clearly born for climbing!
Champagne and photo’s ensued at the AA Landmark signpost, which is extremely cool! Although I think it’ll take a few weeks for the whole trip to sink in and 2 weeks of easy training to ensure good quality recovery of all energy systems.
We finished off the training camp in true Epic Camp style with a 7.2km trail run around to the southern most tip of the South Island (lookout point) and then the trail turned upward with a 300m climb to the very top of Bluff Hill and a run down the other side...a perfect ending really to a great training camp.
Big thanks to John Newsom, Gordo Brynn and of course, Scott Molina for being the leaders and organising everything and everyone. And of course Super-Dave and his support team for feeding us, being mechanics, direction advisors and generally being all-round Super.
Right then....job done, this training camp has certainly re-written what I thought was my mental and physical boundaries, so it’ll be fascinating once recovered to see what this seasons racing results will be like....a different and higher level....oh yeah for definite!!!
Epic Camp! There’s no easy way...
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment