The Great Otway Gravel Grind is a new event in it’s first year so nobody knew quite what to expect from this event run the day after the Otway Odyssey to keep people in the area and it certainly did that with Forrest and surrounds packed with campers and people over the full weekend. The Gravel Grind is designed to be a bit more inclusive event with time out zones where you are not timed and can get food and a coffee so there were plenty of social riders doing it just for that purpose on the 50km ride. The 100km ride was suited to the more serious rider with a couple of decent climbs and over 2000M of elevation to cover. The event was still a race but you could break it up a bit including the Great Ocean Road section that was un-timed.

Again I lined up for the 100km and Sharon the 50km. The 50km course was common to both races with an extra loop down to the Great Ocean Road then after 10km of surf views the 100km riders climbed back up to the first checkpoint again then a fast common 15km run down to the finish at Forrest footy ground as we did on Saturday. The roads were not closed even on the timed sections so quite a bit of caution was required on the fast and sometimes loose gravel corners. There was quite a bit of car traffic on the final section for me.

I was feeling Saturdays effort in the quads at the start but I was determined to hold onto the front fast group of about 20 riders as long as I could. This group included Phil Anderson but he had an advantage today on the gravel road sections riding a Cyclocross bike but I was still on my mountain bike. The Cyclocross bikes had a significant advantage on the fast road sections but only a slight disadvantage on the lose sections. I got dropped by the fast group twice but managed to get back on both times hitting the red zone doing so but there was a head wind so going off the back would have been even harder work. The first climb was the same as yesterdays 100km and I manage to pass Phil and a few others about half way up but about 15 minutes later he passed me again with his huge quads pumping him from group to group, I couldn’t go with him and watched him slowly increase his gap to me and eventually disappear. He finished the first timed section a couple of minutes in front of me as did Brian John who got second yesterday.

The first neutral zone was great, coffee and food and you could spend up to an hour sitting around chatting and the like without penalty. Having missed my morning coffee I indulged in one and refueled for the next section. After a while I hit the road with 7km of undulating road then a sweet downhill run down to Kennet River and the Great Ocean Road. Some great views out over the Otways and ocean along this section. Just before the bitumen there were 5000 tourists completely blocking the road looking at koalas in the trees as we hit the bottom at high speed. They parted just in time for me and there were many stories of near misses of dopey tourists oblivious to the fact they were blocking a road!

The un-timed neutral zone along the great Ocean Road was into a head wind plus there was traffic lights for road works and plenty of traffic not really bothering to give any room even when there were no other cars on the road but we all came through unscathed and turned for the biggest climb of the event up Wye Road to the first checkpoint again. I was feeling good now I was warmed up and pushed all the way to keep a good pace on this climb and did a very respectable 55 minutes on that section passing a lot of riders. I stopped at the checkpoint because my right hamstring was complaining loudly and hopped off for a quick stretch and some re-fueling. I ran into Kylie and her social group here having a ball on their “coffee ride”.

Back on the bike still with some hamstring soreness but I soon forgot it as I pushed on the last fast run back to Forrest. I caught up with a car that was going slow and choking me with dust and they would not speed up or let me past, very annoying. Eventually their phone rang and they pulled over and I started passing people again and blowing out heaps of brown snot from all the dust. There was quite a bit of car traffic and you had to be careful on this section. I was flying past heaps of people on the run back into Forrest and managed to snag second place in my age group beaten by Brian John who was second yesterday so we both moved up a step on the podium. I even beat Phil Anderson again. It was a great two days but I was proper broken after Sundays race having pushed it along both days in preparation for the upcoming Otway 300. On the podium they gave me the wrong prize pack an error I didn’t notice till I was back in Torquay, how hard is it to match number 2 on a bag and number 2 on the podium so I will never know what was in it. I did win some socks for 3rd on Saturday and a magazine on Sunday. The trophies were all handed out OK however.

Sharon was unsure if to ride socially with Kylie’s group on the 50km ride as her knee was quite sore from yesterday due to her seat not being set at the correct height Saturday but as I already suspected as soon as some other women road past her her competitive streak kicked in and she was off racing people again. Sharon was the only women to back up from Saturday in her age group but she found the event a bit underwhelming and skipped the coffee stop and just got it over and done with. She was still quite pleased with her 5th position in her age group though.

The feedback from the Sunday event was evidently quite positive but it lacked something and I think they would need to change the course each year or it may be a bit boring to do again? There was no requirement to carry a first aid kit in the rules, a lack of phone coverage at times combined with a distinct lack of any marshals on course except at the main check point and car traffic may have been a recipe for disaster? There were only a handful of event photo’s even though there was a photographer on course that I saw several times. There was no where near the vibe of Saturday at the event center and it will be interesting to see what they do with it next year. It certainly did kept lots of people in the area over the weekend which was great for the Forrest economy and I enjoyed the challenge of backing up after Sundays race to simulate the upcoming O300.