I've been meaning for years to do the Lake Taupo Cycle Challenge, so this year I decided that never mind the training, I'd just enter the motherfucker, pedal round, and see what it was like.
So I did.
160km is a long way to ride a pushbike. Longer than I've ever ridden, for sure.
She'll be right though eh?
So I pedalled from my handy-dandy five-star Taupo hotel down to the start line on Saturday morning. Beautiful weather. A little too beautiful... as it turns out, a bit of cloud later in the day would have gone down a treat.
Over an hour's wait at the start line. I suppose that's what you get when there's over ten thousand riders.
"Why, yes, in my spare time, I rescue small children from burning buildings, and occasionally take time out to polish my Nobel Peace Prize."
The ride round the lake heads down the western side and then back up through Turangi and along SH1. There's 100km of gently (and then not-so-gently) rolling hills, followed by 40km of nice flat spinning, the mighty Hatepe hill, and then a 10km downhill roll and sprint back into town.
It's funny how you're always fine over the distance you've actually trained for, isn't it?
I started hurting around the 70km mark.
Had about enough of this now. Pity I'm not even halfway through the ride yet.
My head was splitting. That sun was fucking hot.
Fortunately, kiwifruit the friendly local photographer, chortling at me from his XT660, was happy to be waved down and dispatched in search of ibuprofen. Greater love hath no man...
By the time I got to the top of Waihi hill, 100km in, I was a mess. I sat down on the side of the road with my head between my legs, waiting for the pounding between my ears to stop.
(Yes, I was well-hydrated. Not quite sure what the headache was all about. Just my body trying to tell me that it disapproved of all this hard work, I suppose.)
The eventual arrival of ibuprofen via XT660 was an absolute fookin godsend.
I rolled into Turangi, sagging over the handlebars, and crawled into the Caltex. Half an hour in the air conditioning with my feet up savouring a big greasy sossidge roll and a cold Coke had me feeling downright chipper.
It was all good fun from there. Of course, the previous hour's worth of 5kph hillclimbing and general sitting down and whatnot had left me firmly in the company of the middle-aged female brigade, but never mind. Another 40km or so of beautiful flat lakeside spinning brought me to Hatepe hill, which really wasn't so bad.
That was probably the Coke and sossidge roll talking, mind you. Regardless, I happily rode up it while cunts were hopping off their bikes and walking left right and center. The headache started to return at the top, but fortunately kiwifruit was hanging out nearby with his camera and didn't mind sharing the ibuprofen again.
Oh yes. After 145km, I was happy to see the man with the drugs.
And from there on in, it's all fast pedaling and daydreams of icecream at the finish line.
Halle fucking lujah.
8 hours and 4 minutes all up.
Yup, I went to bed early that night.
And then woke up on Sunday morning and went motorcycle racing.
PMCC round 1, Taupo track 3, Clubmans.
These 'sidecar' types appear to communicate primarily via cryptic gestures. I think this one may have something to do with sexual attraction. Can hardly blame him though eh?
Track 3, short as it is, is actually great fun. I'd never ridden it before.
Off the start/finish line (which is about 200m along the main back straight of Track 1) you have time to get to the top of second gear before braking and tipping into an easy left hander.
Wide open on the throttle towards the tighty-tight hairpin, and there's a drop-off that has the front wheel lightening up (if you're on a GSX1400) or waving wildly in the air (if you're on a proper racebike).
The tight left hairpin is very tight, but I leave the mighty 1400 in second gear for it. Throttle as smoothly as you can out of it, then get way over the right hand side of the bike.
Stay hard on the gas if you have the balls for it, and your knee brushes the rumble strips as you take a nice wide right-hand corner (with a disconcerting dropoff halfway through) and head onto the curvy bit of the track that goes past the stands and into the big decreasing-radius hairpin.
Third gear as you straighten up, and fourth as you come up to the stands for a few seconds, and then it's braking and blipping and whatever your preferred line for the big hairpin is. I head in relatively tight and aim for the transformer on the telephone pole as I brake, then tip in hard and gas it in second, using the whole width of the track out onto the back straight. Don't look at the kitty litter!
There's enough space on the mini-back-straight to get the 1400 about halfway through fourth gear after the start/finish line before I'm hard on the brakes again for the first left-hander, and then it's rinse and repeat time.
Each class got a single 8-minute practice session and then three six-lap races. Clubmans and the 450cc-and-under tards shared a grid.
8 minutes wasn't really enough time to work out the very tight section of the old track, but I went round the hairpin a few times and figured all would be well. And it pretty much was...
I qualified on the second row. The first race start was a bit of a dog's breakfast, since we had no idea where to sit behind all the tards, but we all got away reasonably well considering half of us were still paddling our bikes backwards and/or in second gear, etc.
Biggles08 and a brace of R1s were the obvious fast cunts of the group, with a solid 3+ seconds per lap on the rest of the field. I was fourth into the first corner and watched Marcus lead the thous away - go git 'em bro! I'll leave him to tell his own story in due course.
Good-lookin' fulla, pity about the Kawasaki.
A fair amount of fumbling and bumbling saw a bleck CBR600RR catch me coming onto the front (not-so-) straight on the last lap, and I rolled over the line fifth out of nine bikes. No worries.
Second race, another good start. A GSX1400 has to be about the easiest bike there is to launch off the line. Skill not required, just a bit of throttle and a flick of the clutch, so that left me happily sitting in fourth again into T1 behind the three fast guys with the CBR600RR up my butt in traditional homosexual roadracing style.
It's a Honda, and it's behind me. Fortunately, Quasimoto leathers do not come with buttflaps.
And there he stayed for the next five laps, until an overly-lazy stab at the gear lever coming out of the right-hander onto the front 'straight' saw me hit the limiter in second instead of shifting to third. Woops. And he got past once more, and there was one corner left before the chequered flag... fifth again.
Long story short, I didn't let that happen again in the third and final race of the day. No cockups, no letting any cunts past, all good. Fourth place by a good margin.
Best lap of the day, 47.2 seconds.
And the most fun I've ever had with my pants on. Seriously. This racing thing is an absolute bucket of giggles, and that's understating it a whole lot.
I gotta give some major shout-outZ here to my sponsors, MotoTT and the Taupo Textile Centre - I couldn't do this without you guys. Make sure you get in touch with them if you're in need of perfectly-run motorcycle track time and/or curtains and soft furnishings, folks!
A final moment from kiwifruit's camera:
8 hours in the sun with full-finger cycling gloves leaving me with a Michael Jackson tan line: priceless.
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Originally Posted by team cudby
But its a relatively tight track so i'll let ya have it lol 
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