It’s been a little quiet around here lately. My apologies for that. I’ve been gradually building up my heart medication doses and getting my head around processing the diagnosis. While it wasn’t totally dire, it still came as a bit of a shock. But anyway, there’s no use dwelling on it. Hopefully back to regular programming from now on…

I’ve actually completed a couple of hundreds this month, but this one was the first since moving onto my full medication regime. I rolled out with the intention to ride hard and see how my body (and mind) reacted to the longer endurance ride with some efforts thrown into the mix.

It’s still pretty nippy in the mornings here and the initial hour felt sluggish. Cold fingers and legs that refused to warm and loosen up. Hurry up summer! By the time I’d linked up with John and ridden over to meet the bunch I was feeling a lot better though.

Setting off with the usual SunDaze bunch things soon got spicy! A race-fit Scotty put in a big dig off the front! I sprinted HARD out of the saddle to catch his wheel. Nobody else managed to bridge the gap and it was just me sticking with him over one small rise, I’d gone WAY too deep. On the second rise the elastic snapped and he pulled away. We re-grouped a little further up the road but I was gassed.

On the run-in to Richmond I did my best to surf wheels and hang with the front guys. It took some race craft and a few more burnt matches, but I made the final break of five and we hammered towards the Richmond town sign. I had absolutely nothing left for the sprint finish. Onto the final straight I watched Scotty accelerate away and easily take the win, with John ahead of me. I rolled over in a respectable third place. I consoled myself with two sugar-laden jam tarts and a double-shot latte from the bakery.

Apparently that wasn’t quite enough sugar as the second half of the ride was a struggle! My legs felt a little “blunt” and just not up to any harder efforts. I wasn’t falling off the back of the bunch, but I certainly wasn’t pushing the pace at all. Thankfully we had a good post-bakery group and we swapped turns to share the load over the final 40km. Around the 85km mark, the sun finally burnt through the morning chill so I swung off from the bunch as they headed back to Hobart, then tacked on an additional loop to bring up the hundred. I was done. It was a low-key soft pedal back to the car with very little left in the tank.

Distance: 102 km / 63.4 miles
Total elevation gain: 918 m / 3010 feet
Average speed: 29.2 kph / 18.1 mph

I’m not sure if it was the medication, the effort itself, or perhaps my immune system fighting something off in the background, but the ride wiped me out for the rest of the day. Usually I can eat some food, have a sit down, then recover enough to be useful in the afternoon, but I was done. I had to have a little nap! Hopefully it’s just my body adjusting. I guess we’ll find out soon enough!