Sharon has wanted to do this event for a while so both of us doing it was planned some time back to get reasonable airfare prices. Sharon and I flew over to Victoria Friday afternoon to do the Otway Odyssey event based in Forrest on Saturday. Sunday was the Great Otway Gravel Grind a new event that compliments the traditional Odyssey event so we entered both to get value for money out of our airfares, rental car and other expenses being spread across 2 events instead of one and we got a good discount for entering both. We hired an Outlander from Thrifty Car Rentals as we knew both our bike bags would fit in the back Ok and when we picked it up at the airport it was exactly the same colour as the one we have, very freaky.

We were staying in Torquay with Adam and Kylie so we had a very early start with an hours drive to Forrest and my 100km race starting at 7AM. I had assembled and tested the bikes on Friday night but it was late to bed and 4:30AM came around way too quickly. We smashed down a bit of breakfast, did the usual morning stuff, stuffed the bikes and gear in the back of the rental car and we were off. A mate of Adams had picked up our race plates but there was a bit of stress hooking up with him at the last minute to get them on the bikes. I put my nutrition and bottles in the transition area next to my race number area in the 200’s (or so I thought).

A bit of a last minute rush stuffing my pockets with extra gels and bars and headed to the start line out on the road with no real race plan or strategy. The race center was the Forrest Football ground and I would come back through it 3 times on the 100km race doing three very different race loops around the area. Sharon started at 8AM on the 50km race and came through twice. I started out just keeping a good pace as I generally do on and into the first big climb of the day. Some super fast slippy gravel road descents then some super steep short sections and we hit what they call the motor bike track. This was narrow, rutted with trees across it regularly and a bit crap in places and barely OK in others. A lot of branches hitting you in the arms and face even though they had trimmed it a bit pre-race. Only the 100km did this section so Sharon missed all the fun!

Back in transition after the first loop and my first disaster hit when I could not find my water bottles and nutrition I had placed pre-race. After going up and down the line a few times for what felt like 5 minutes I abandoned all hope of finding them and headed to the water point to fill my bottle and get back out to try and make up all the places I had just lost faffing around. Loop two was mostly single track on the awesome Forrest trail network but I was a bit slow and kept getting passed by better faster technical riders. I thought I had gone the wrong way at one stage as there were NO track markings at all unlike the rest of the course. I stopped and thought about going back to the last junction but some guys came through and they were certain it was OK, some more time lost here. Midway through this section there was some common track with the 50km racers and it came congested and difficult to pass the slower riders in large trains. Later one guy was blocking the track after what looked like a major crash and people were calling ambulances and everybody was stopped again going nowhere, only a small amount of time lost here, hope he was Ok.

Once I hit the fire road sections back to Forrest I opened up and quickly caught and passed all those that had gone past me on the single track except one guy who looked like he was racing in my category and was keeping a close eye on me. I managed to leapfrog him pretty easily the last time through transition doing a slick 24HR style stop and getting to the single track while he was still faffing about getting stuff out of his bags. Luckily I had put a few extra gels in my pocket at the start as they were all I had for the whole race.

The third and final loop has a long brutal fire road climb and it suited me perfectly dieseling all the way up to Lake Elizabeth picking off riders one by one the whole way. The section down into the lake was great fun then a very steep 5 minute climb back out followed by more climbing up onto the dam wall. This led us back into the Forrest single track to a tight up and down run through a few tracks then back into the Forrest footy ground to cross the finish line. I really pushed on the last loop to keep my speed up as much as I could and it paid off with a finish time under 5:20. I had looked at last years results and Phil Anderson the Tour de France stage winner did 5:25 last year so around 5:30 to 6HRs was my estimate pre-race but I didn’t really know how I would go so I was stoked until I looked at the online results!

Phil Anderson crossed the line about 5 minutes after I did and I heard the commentary but when we looked at the online results I was 30 minutes behind him in 7th place. Apparently there was some timing error and it had been corrected by the time I found the timing tent to see what was going on and the online results eventually updated and I was stoked to be in 3rd place behind two absolute gun riders (Tim Jameson the ex pro roady won). So with all my holdups it made no difference in the end, I would have just been a few minutes closer to them but still would have been 3rd on the day. Still can’t believe I beat Phil Anderson home. Sharon and I took about 10 minutes post race to finally locate my bag in transition in the 1200’s instead of the 200’s, no wonder I couldn’t find it!

Sharon did the 50km course and some of it was common with our course but they did a different single track loop to us only sharing one section and some of the fire road parts. Sharon had set a target of 3:30 to complete the 50km. She also got held up a few times with the 30km racers (walkers) displaying not so good track etiquette by not giving right of way to some one who is still riding. Sharon ended up riding with a great group of guys who were demon fast on the down but Sharon was way faster on the ups so they swapped over who was in front each section and had a ball riding the last part of the race with heaps of fun conversation and plenty of “çhicking the boys” on the ups. The only drama Sharon had was a little cuddle with the dirt towards the end after she went over the bars, she is not really sure what happened but even with a lay down it was so close to her goal time missing it by a mere 7 minutes on the line.

The event is quite well run and the variation in track over the course of the race is great. We both though it was an event worth doing again, we both had a great day. Part 2 will cover the first ever Great Otway Gravel Grind on the Sunday.

All results here