1/23/2014-1/27/2014

Santos Tour Down Under and Adelaide

After getting back to Melbourne, I repacked and had a quick turn around to South Australia for the weekend.  I got into Adelaide at 10am which gave me time to reassemble my bike and go to the bike expo before my host for the weekend(Damien) got done with work.  A cool new bike for anyone who is looking is this year’s Trek TT(Speed concept 7 and Speed concept 9) which minimizes wind resistance from both the front and the side. We went out for dinner at the Unley bike festival and then went to bed early to be ready for the ride in the morning.

Friday morning we started the Bupa challenge at 6:30. The Bupa challenge is 154km and follows one of the stages of the Tour Down Under. 

We rode in the morning the pros did it in the afternoon. I struggled a little bit. I think it was more from jet lag and less from lack of fitness but I could be wrong.  There was a guy along the route with a banner that said, "I love Madeleine's" so we stopped for a photo. (Forgive us for looking sloppy it was the top of a hill)

So I’m going to start training harder next week.  At the finish we ate lunch and played in the ocean.  A channel 9 news reporter saw us and took a video of us standing in the water. After seeing the awards for the day we rode another 50km to our accommodation for the night.  I really struggled. There was a surprise uphill and I was not having any of it. I think that it was mostly mental fatigue, slowly and surely we made it to McLaren. Dinner in McLaren was amazing. I don’t know if the food was really spectacular or if I was just that hungry but I really enjoyed it. We stayed at a cute bed and breakfast with amazing breakfast. I had cereal, yogurt, fruit salad, eggs, toast, and tomatoes. After breakfast we headed out on our bikes to do a winery tour. The bikes hurt a bit but it eased up after a few hours. We went to 3 wineries and bought 7 bottles of wine. After the wineries we went into the main part of the city to watch the Tour down under. We saw them twice once at a café and once on a long uphill of the last loop. 

Then we got tricky and met up with another friend who was in town for the race. We all had lunch at a delicious chocolate shop and then got him to take the wine and some of our supplies back to Adelaide for us.  The 40km ride back to Adelaide was nice. The pain from the morning had subsided and it was a beautiful trip down the rail trail.  We got back in time for dinner and went to an amazing Tai restaurant, so much good food.

Sunday we celebrated Australia day and were a bit lazier.  Breakfast, then the farmer’s market before going to see the end of the tour down under. The last stage was a 50 lap course so the riders passed by every few minutes. They zoomed around the track looking relaxed. We got stuck on the wrong side and just missed seeing the finish. To make up for our bad placement during the race we found the best place possible for the awards. Lying on the grass on an island in the middle of a pond we watched the presentation while eating strawberries. Then Cadel Evans 5m away from us in slow motion with no helmet on. It was incredible.

 After the end of all the Tour festivities we made our way down to the night market for Australia Day festivities. We watched the parade and then met up with our friends for dinner, fireworks, and to get out stuff back. We had a perfect spot directly across the river from where the fireworks were being launched. There was one the exploded just after it was launched, barely off the water.  Oops. But it did look cool.

Monday was another early morning we had a 9am appointment in port Adelaide to Kayak with Dolphins in Mangroves. The dolphins were beautiful but I of course liked the mangroves better. 

 

I think that I had replenished my energy after the bike ride because I was paddling relatively lightly while my partner relaxed in the back seat and we were beating everyone else by miles. 

Not that it was a race I was just enjoying being on the water.  We had lunch on the beach, played in the waves, and then biked back to the city. We spent the afternoon playing short course golf. I wasn’t as bad as I had remembered being. Vietnamese for dinner and then early to bed for my 6am flight back to Melbourne.