new zealand …uphill

Week one – Stewart Island to Dunedin

April 24, 2009 on 7:23 pm | In Notes from the bike | 6 Comments

I am officially on the road! I stood at the start of SH1, New Zealand’s longest road that goes from tail to tip. I stood and looked at the signpost that in one direction pointed to Stewart Island, from where I had just come, and in the other to Cape Reinga. The sign gave a distance of 1401km in a straight line. My route would add an extra 1200km to that. I departed Bluff riding Sh1 on Wednesday with my temporary riding partner Tomoaki from Japan. The day was a little grey and cool, but we had a slight tail wind. Tomoaki has been cycling around the South Island for the last two months so I planned to learn as much as possible from him as I could. I bombarded him with questions and extracted some good info. I learnt I was travelling relatively light, which is good. My rain protection is lacking which is bad. I will have to get a better rain coat if I plan to stay dry. Also I was advised that the west coast is wet wet wet and some of the mountains make you cry. As long as it is raining when you cry I thought, then no one will notice. I had been leaning towards heading east anyway so Tom helped me with the decision. Tom was only heading for Invercargill today, I was going to push on to Gore.

Riding with a partner is much more enjoyable. We took turns at leading, and just having someone to pace yourself with is fantastic. Although I think my exuberance meant I took on hills with reckless abandon whereas Tom took the sensible slow and steady approach.

We checked out the Invercargill information centre and the live Tuataras on display, Tom dragged me to the dispaly. He was fascinated by them. There was a Burt Monroe exhibit there, our very own World’s Fastest Indian, and a room full of crates that looked to hold archaeologists treasures, with one long man slowly examining the contents of one. I have no idea what was in the crates but it looked exciting.

I said good bye to Tom and insisted he travel to the North Island and stay with me in Kerikeri. I hope to see him again in a few months time. For now I was pushing on to Gore. A slight uphill gradient all the way, and an extra 70kms. It was going to be a big day. I was keen to see what I could do.

The going was pretty good. Cranking it out uphill all the way. The countryside is beautiful and the wind was cooling. I had to adjust layers a couple of times to get my body temperature right, but otherwise it was a good ride. I had two rewards on the way where the gentle incline became a steep decline. The first was an awesome drop for a kilometre or so (distance not altitude). I gripped the handlebars tightly and went wheeeeeeeeeeee. I could have turned around and ridden up the hill to do it all again, but I didn’t need to because in another 20ks was anther drop. Wheeeeeeeeee. If it wasn’t for those two awesome hills the ride would not have been nearly as enjoyable. I was screaming with joy, literally. It felt good.

I reached Mataura 15km short of Gore and felt like my tank was near empty. I had an option of accommodation in Mataura but was determined to push on. A quick stop at a petrol station for chocolate and I was off again, uphill some more to Gore. I hurt. I arrived just on dusk after a long seven hours pedalling. I covered 98km in one day and I was stoked. My legs didn’t hate me as much as I though they would, just a mild dislike. My arse was not my friend though.

The next day I dragged myself out of bed and packed the bike up once again, and departed for Balclutha. This day was a mission and almost broke me. I have a cycling guidebook that gives some detail on routes and gradients. It has elevation charts that show the hills, but it is taking me some time to figure out what a little lump on the chart translates to in the real world. The scale of the elevation meant little to me at this stage. A 100m climb vs a 300m climb all depends on the gradient. The route to Balclutha was up hill with a continuous series of bumps. Not just a few, but dozens of bumps. I though nothing of it looking at them on paper until the I arrived at the third one, then the fourth one then the fifth one and on and on and on. I was a never ending cycle of grinding up a hill, reaching the top to see the road disappear down into a valley then up another equally steep hill. And every hill I prayed that when I got to the top I would see flat road. It never happened. It was sole destroying, and I knew this was the work of Frank, the hill at home in Kerikeri that still insists on tormenting me. After such a successful first day Frank was knocking me down a peg or two. It all felt like some sick joke as I climbed and climbed and felt like dying. Then, I must have been halfway through the hills and it happened.

I got to the top of one of the hills and cried.

Not of sadness or pain. I cried out of happiness. It sounds odd, and I didn’t know what was happening to me. I was so so angry then I remembered where I was and what I was doing and I shouted, and I mean at the top of my lungs, “Yeah, I am F#@%!n doing this!” and put my head down and I kept going. My legs started moving easier and I found a new energy. I blanked the hills out and made it to Balclutha. That night I collapsed.

I was pleased I have nailed two pretty tough days but I realised I haven’t been eating properly and running out of gas. After a consult to the Twitter-verse it was clear that I needed to fuel my body better and continuously on the go. For the next day to Dunedin I stocked up on nuts, and energy bars to snack on all the way.

I departed in the mist from Balclutha after a large breakfast of carbs and found more of the same hills, some steeper and longer. I now knew I could do it and powered on. I took a lot of breaks and snaked often and it helped. Finally I broke out of the hills and found flat roads and I was thrilled until once on the plains the headwind hit. Right on my goddamn nose, I couldn’t believe it. I was cycling on flat road and it felt like I was still going up the hills, except there was no down the other side of the hill. So this was a new experience. I could feel my speed was not where I needed it to be to make Dunedin and had bursts of hard grind into the wind to pick up my speed. Then I discovered something very useful. If you position yourself the right distance from the stream of traffic screaming by, when a big truck goes by you can ride in the tailwind the truck pulls behind it and this gives you a fantastic boost. So I experimented with my gap to the traffic from close to the traffice and not so close to certain death and found a good spot. Plus I found that two trucks together gives you a better boost, however a truck coming the other way can also deal a blow of wind that will slow you. To take my mind off of my aching legs and backside I focused on this new reward. I had to keep my mind positive and so I listened out for trucks, and as they passed I hit the gas and waited for the tailwind. The boost helped me get up to a better cruising speed and I could go up a gear for a while. When you are 6 hours on a bike each day you look for every optimisation you can find.

I hit Mosgiel, the southern part of Dunedin, and then ventured up the hill into Dunedin. I knew this was going to be tough after three days of hard grind and mentally I was screwed. I had been fearing this hill all the way from Balcutha so much I was fixated on it in an unhealthy way. It was late in the day and I gave it a go despite my body saying “no”. A third of the way over I bailed. It was getting dark and my tank was dry again. I turned back to Mosgiel. I felt like such a failure. I had my rough schedule in my mind and knew that spending a full day on Stewart Island left me a day behind. Was doing the whole country in less than seven weeks going to be an impossible task for me? I hit the sack and slept an eternity.

The next day I consulted my schedule. Before I left I had three possible routes through the South Island. What would determine which one I took would be weather, my daily capacity for distance I can cover and possible accommodation options. These routes roughly told me where I had to be on what days to keep on schedule. Seven weeks will go pretty quick and I can easily fall behind if I am not careful. I have opted for the east coast so now my route is fixed. I then do a five day plan to map out my stopovers. I have to factor in where there is likely to be accommodation around where I am expecting to stop. My range is an average of 70km a day so this can be a little tricky, as you don’t want a day where 70-80kms leaves you 30km from any accommodation. I have a sleeping bag so if I have to I can find somewhere to crash in the wild should I need to. I use a variety of tools to find accommodation. First there is the vianet.travel network and retail sites like www.travelbug.co.nz and stayn.co.nz. The interactive maps makes it a real doddle to find accommodation in the back of beyond. I follow this up with a quick Google and these together give me a pretty good list of options for each area. Then I double check with the information centres as I pass through town to check for other alternatives. I amazes me how the information centres have so little information on surrounding towns and I always find more options online than the information centres are aware of. The information sharing from i-site to i-site is really non-existent which really surprises me.

I re-planned my route and calculated my stopovers up the east coast. I did it twice. I couldn’t believe it, I was a day ahead of schedule. I had originally planned to go from Invercargill to Balclutha via a more scenic route through the Catlins. By going through Gore and by pushing through some long days I had shaved off two days. I had to have it wrong I thought but no, it was right. And so I decided to take a rest day in Mosgiel. I probably should keep cycling as the day is beautiful and conditions perfect and I should get ahead of schedule while the weather is good. But heading though Dunedin there are three monster hills to get over plus I have to do my 70km to get to the next accommodation. It will be a big day and I need to be ready for it. Besides you have to be able to enjoy the beautiful days on your days off to My rest days are also planning days so I will sort out the next week ahead. I want to be in Christchurch by Friday to keep on schedule. If I leave on Sunday I will have six days cycling to get there and I can do it in five if the conditions are right. I attended the local Anzac Day parade and was amazed at the army of old service men that came in by the busload for the parade and it was another humbling example of why I shouldn’t complain about having to spend seven weeks on a bicycle.

I am expecting rain this week, so I had better get a raincoat! It is a shame Mosgiel is closed for Anzac day. Looks like it will be a day of forced rest.