Otway suffer-fest!

The 2010 Otway Odyssey

My legs were screaming, I was puffing hard and I was going backwards through the bunch. “Oh shit” I thought to myself, “this could be a very long day.” We were on the first climb, about twenty minutes into the race. I pushed my dead legs on to a chase bunch and passed them on the next descent, taking all sorts of risks and almost crashing, to re-join the lead group by the next steep climb. The race had only just begun.

The Otway Odyssey is a classic 100km race on the Aussie calendar and this year it pulled the strongest field of elite racers for a 100km race in Australia ever. It was always going to be a tough day, but with over 2600 metres of climbing and an eager field keen to snap up the $3000 prize money on offer, I had a feeling this year’s Otway was going to take ‘tough’ to a whole new level.

With this sort of pre-race build-up and having never ridden the course, my imagination was going wild before the race. There was no doubt about it, I was nervous.

The alarm woke us at 530am and we shoved down as much breakfast as we could before assembling on the startline for a 7:15am start. The sun was only just rising on Apollo Bay as the wind ripped though the main street, muffling the standard pre-race banter and giving us a solid head wind to ride into off the gun.

Without too long we were off and after a few minutes of flat tarmac we were on the first climb of the day and my legs started telling me they’d rather still be in bed. “If my legs aren’t keen to go hard today my head will just have to push twice as hard”, I said to myself as I re-joined the lead group on the 2nd climb.

The first few sections of this climb weren’t too tough but soon we hit a super-steep section where a lead group of riders separated from the rest of us. This section was extremely tough with steep climb after steep climb but finally we crested the incessant granny-gear sections and hit a section of tarmac. At this point there was a group of about six of us but that soon dwindled to four over the next few sections with myself, Shaun Lewis, Peter Hatton and Jason English riding together.

The climbs kept coming though and I was really hanging by this point. One gradual climb saw me dangling off the back of the group, puffing hard and hoping with every bend in the road, that I’d see the top. I finally did and at this point the three others were about 50 metres ahead up the road. I pushed hard to try to re-join the group on the next descent and was making up some ground when Shaun and Pete crashed into each other, giving Jason a gap ahead to us three.

Not long after we were into the first section of downhill singletrack. It was a lot of fun although I was starting to cramp and we were only about half way through the race! Ouch! I slammed down some more electrolyte, grimaced and kept pedalling. In a weird sort of way, this was fun.

Singletrack kept things interesting for the next 20km or so but it was far from flat with plenty of tough little climbs to remind me how much my legs hurt. Pete lead most of these sections and held a decent pace to try to reel in English.

I ran out of water at about the 55km mark. I’d got through two bidons on my bike and one in my back pocket! It was over 30 degrees though and I was sweating hard. I knew the feed zone was at the 67km mark and tried to ignore the cramps as I counted down the kilometres and tried to hold onto Pete’s back wheel.

The feed came surprisingly quickly though and I grabbed two new bottles and some more food with glee. The next stage gave us 20km of singletrack before hitting the feedzone again and heading out for the final 13km.

This section is where our trio really started to slow down. We still wanted to close the gap to English but it seemed like none of us had much energy left. Shaun did most of the singletrack duties for at least the first half of the 20km and, while I felt like we weren’t going particularly fast, I also didn’t feel like I could go any faster. I led for most of the second half and tried really hard to keep the pace high. I actually felt quite good at this point and hoped in the back of my mind that my legs might finally be coming good.

I sucked my next two bottles dry by the time we got to the feedzone again, took on another two bottles for the final leg, and hoped this final climb on fireroad wasn’t as bad as people had described. It didn’t take long of pedalling on this fireroad climb to know that my body had well and truly had enough of this crazy race. I tried to take some turns with the other two boys but just couldn’t summon up the power to even get around them!

With about 10km to go Pete put in an attack on us which neither Shaun nor myself could respond to. We pedalled stubbornly on, tried to get up the climbs as best we could before hitting up a long singletrack descent. Shaun had a crash in one of the early mud bogs so I got around him. I knew this descent would be a good spot to make up some time but I just couldn’t do it. I tried to descend hard and fast but my whole body was in pain by now —  it was more a case of getting down the hill than descending with any sort of style.

The second last steep climb of the day is called the ‘Sledgehammer’ because it’s very steep. It wasn’t too bad though. It was steep but short. Shaun got a small gap on me at this point but I pedalled hard to get back on his wheel over the top. From here it was more singletrack — which I descended with similarly tired vagueness — and up a short and steep sandy climb. I lost traction here and had to get off and walk a few metres. Shaun made it up clean and got a slight gap on me which he managed to hold over the last few kilometres to the finish.

We crossed the line 4hours and 54 minutes after we had started having climbed some super-challenging climbs. It felt like a lifetime out there with the hardship of the race and the concentration required in the singletrack. I was happy to have finished such an epic event and it was great doing the race with buddies Shaun and Pete. In the end Pete grabbed 6th, Shaun 7th and myself 8th.

That afternoon we sat at an Apollo Bay fish and chips shop eating all we could and chatting about the day’s adventure. After the morning’s hardship, my mind felt completely flushed and I was already forgetting the pain and working out how I can go faster next year!

Thanks to Giant for my awesome new carbon hardtail and to all my sponsors for their great support. Thanks also to Sarah (and Murray) for feeding me and Dwight for some last minute accommodation and carrying our bags around the countryside. Thanks also to Rapid Ascent for the photo.