Source To Sea
100 Mile Challenge
Saturday 10th November 2007

The entry form said “one hundred miles of downhill cycling” and “perhaps the only 100 mile downhill cycle ride in the world”, sounds like a Tui ad, yeah right.

Race day morning, 7:00am, time to get organised; energy drinks, bars, carbo shotz, check tire pressures, Wallis Cycles’ kit on etc, etc.  Weather overcast and cold, about 11 degrees.  St. Arnaud is dead flat with a couple of lodges, a general store and a community hall where they had registration.  Start line was around the corner beside Lake Rotoiti.  I rode up and down the main highway a few times to warm up and got to the start line raring to go at about 8:30am, with the start at 9:00am.

8:45am race briefing, 9:00am and we’re off, and guess what? As soon as you leave the start line its uphill for five minutes.  Had a very slow first five kilometres due to roadworks and a nervous bunch of 850 starters.  After things settled down I got into a bunch of about 100 people cruising down lots of gentle downhill sections at about 35-45 kph, awesome.  The scenery was fantastic.  After about 20 kilometres it started to warm up and just got better and better, lots of downhill parts through to Murchison then more of the same from there, although there were several short-ish uphill climbs mixed in between.  After about 100 kilometres my group had been whittled down to about 40 fit cycling machines, pushing hard to the finish.  At 10 kilometres from the finish I decided I was the quickest and took off at a good pace, splitting the bunch in half.  At five kilometres out I put in another push and dragged about 10 of us to the finish with half of them wheel suckers passing me just before the line, bugger!!  This was the first time I’d racked more than 100 kilometres and was very happy to finish just under five hours, and to have a nice glass of local Chardonnay afterwards with my three support crew to re-hydrate.  The whole ride was great, plenty of fantastic scenery, good happy chatter along the way, and I can’t wait till next year. 

If you are keen to do next years ride and have any questions about where to stay, etc, feel free to email me at keithg.hunter@xtra.co.nz.