C2K 2017 - “los tres amigos”

1.0C2K Bike Ridehttps://c2kbikeride.com.auC2K 2017 - “los tres amigos” - C2K Bike Riderich600338<blockquote class="wp-embedded-content"><a href="https://c2kbikeride.com.au/2018/01/03/c2k-2017-los-tres-amigos/">C2K 2017 – “los tres amigos”</a></blockquote> <script type='text/javascript'> <![CDATA[//><!]]> </script><iframe sandbox="allow-scripts" security="restricted" src="https://c2kbikeride.com.au/2018/01/03/c2k-2017-los-tres-amigos/embed/" width="600" height="338" title="“C2K 2017 – “los tres amigos”” — C2K Bike Ride" frameborder="0" marginwidth="0" marginheight="0" scrolling="no" class="wp-embedded-content"></iframe>https://c2kbikeride.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2018/01/DSC_9655-1024x683.jpg1024683by Steve Collins On New Year’s Eve 2016 in Manly, Sydney, I met a girl who told me about a bike ride in Far North Queensland that she and her mother had done that year. The more she told me about it, the more interested I became. I did some research and discovered that it was 7 days of riding and over 780 km. Up and over the Great Dividing Range, across the tip of Cape York, from Cairns on the Coral Sea to Karumba on the Gulf of Carpentaria…. Hmmm Now, for several years I had been bike riding to and from work at North Sydney. It started out of frustration with the Sydney traffic and in particular the daily traffic jam at the Spit Bridge. As I often did at that time, there was no preparation or easing into this new mode of transport… I just grabbed the house bike and off I went Monday morning. I couldn’t ride up some of the hills, so I excused that as a way of enjoying the Harbour views. I think the first time I did it, I took about 1 ½ hours for the 13km journey…but I was exercising and it was much better than the bus. Well I lasted 3 days. My back was sore, my whole body was aching and it wasn’t fun anymore. I spent the next 2 weeks seeing a chiropractor. So I decided, I needed to rethink the way I approached this. I needed a decent bike, so I brought a Flat bar Hybrid bike, something I could use on the route that I took which included roads and bike paths and I felt a bit safer in the traffic going across the Spit Bridge being up high. I also started with 1 day a week. After a while I did manage to ride up the hills, but I was slow, I remember one day being passed by a jogger going up Parriwi road at The Spit…. How embarrassing. But I got better… I eventually rode every day…. I sometimes caught a ferry back to Manly with my bike if I didn’t feel up to it or it was wet. I avoided main roads for safety and my best time for the Queenscliff to North Sydney run was 39 minutes. So now I was thinking about this 780km ride and I had changed jobs then retired from work and had done very little bike riding for about 2 years. But I was smart this time. I thought about what I liked about the ride and how I could most enjoy it. Most important for me was the social side of things and a close second was the opportunity to explore an area of Australia that I had never been to and achieve the goal of riding from one ocean to the other. To truly enjoy those things, I needed to prepare and get fit. In the back of my mind I also thought, It can’t be too hard, a 26yo’s mother has done it!! A few weeks later, I hadn’t done anything about it, but […]