19 July 2009

Terrible Twos

3

Terrible Two’s was a hit last night, there seemed to be around 25 teams, so 50 entrants. I raced with Matt, both of us on carbon roadies. We got off to a terrible start with me getting stuck at the lights and not knowing which road he had taken further ahead. I headed for our first target which was the Australian pub in The Rocks. En Route down Elizabeth Street Matt called and we quickly regrouped and put the pedal down.

We overtook the first team to get to the Australian on the steep hill that leads up to the pub, we felt a little bad with geared bikes as the other two chaps were on fixed and struggling with the incline (tough shit). Our next stop was Pier 5 at Kings St Wharf, we were a little slow getting to this point due to the amount of people about, however we did get a nice long open stretch down by the wharf to do a little slips-treaming in single file.

We then headed off to Haymarket where we saw Cam taking a few photos and Andy was marshalling this checkpoint. The task here was that we had to do a lap of the building on the other persons bike. The only problem here is that I run Look pedals and Matt runs Shimano. So both of us basically had to pedal as quickly as we could by resting the shoes on top of the pedals!

Next stop was Central station which we got to really quickly. We nearly witnessed some dude get mowed down by a interstate coach!

We now only had one more checkpoint which was at the Cricket Ground, Moore park. We pushed this section a little harder as the roads were faster and less cluttered with people. I got a held up again crossing Anzac parade but I wasn’t going to risk my life for a t-shirt!

After completing the final check point we picked up speed once again and got back to the Cricketers pub fairly quickly to find that we had crossed the line 3rd. The guys at the checkpoint told us that we might be second as the first guys had not completed the tasks or had cheated.

We later found out that we were meant to have answered some questions on the sheet of paper that we handed in so we didn’t get a prize! So all up we completed the race in good time but didn’t read the rules properly!

We now know for next time that we just need to come in first with everything in order so there is no confusion! Matt and I had certainly had more gas left in the tank and could have gone harder if we wanted to.

I rode 12km home pissed which I don’t recommend anyone do! Cheers to Matt for being a great team mate. It was certainly a fun night out on the bike We did say after the race that a gearded bike was not really any advantage given that the majority of the race was flat. If we were on our old fixies I reckon we would have done around the same time. Thanks to the Le Pista Resistance guys for organising such a great night!

UPDATE: Here’s a couple of different ride stories on other blogs:
Matt’s Version (my race partner)
Em’s Ride Story (Le Pista Resistance)
Yogi’s adventures (in the comments on Le Pista Resistance)

 

More photos: