Tuesday 24 October 2006

... The Worlds End

21 October - Woke up vey early for a big group ride down to Olympic Park. kind of like a critical mass but it's always more fun with couriers - far more aggressive and when you have large crowds of bikes it's always a lot safer because nobody is goingto plow into a pile of bikes that they can actually see. Almost feel invicible. Got to the park and tried to psyche myself up fo the event - did a little ride around the course (nowhere near any of the sites we examined the weekend before). Wasn’t feeling amazing but put that down to nerves. M&d turned up, as is their wont, to offer a little bit of support as did me aunty jen who I hadn’t seen in quite some time. Eventually the qualifiers started with everyone leaving at 2m intervals and before I knew it I was off. Manifest provided weren't too confusing but the course itself was - the fact that it was one way and not clearly marked meant it was quite easy to make a wrongturn and be locked into an extended detour - in any event, everything was goingswimmingly, had two checkpoints to hit when I made a slight mistake in navigation and then misjudged the height of a kern and the speed I approached it and bang, the entire sidewall of the tyre exploded out and the race was over for me. Not onlywas the race finished prematurely but there were no spare tyres available - realising I could be stranded out in the park this distracted me from the other task at hand which was filming the events - was not feelinggood at all.
Not great feeling, no tyres available meant threat of being stranded, In the end after PJ rescuingme by gettingsome tyres (wrongsize which meant a lot of muckingaround with swapping tubes and tyres) but didn’t really give the main event the attention it deserved. Obviously the race went on regardless of my plight, incredible start of 80 riders charging to bikes and all criss crossing course at blazing speed, very painful to watch - seeingagony on riders faces and knowing that I was missing out on that physical test - I couldn’t even ride the course again to see how I would have done or to just vent my frustrations. Eventually got bike mobile, headed back, had to extend journey the to petersham, where I took the opportunity to steal food from friends in neighbourhood and later dropped in to the party but found more luck with the onset of a little bit of a cold so I couldn't reallystay. What a miserable day.

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