Rode the 100Mile Fling, which was a last minute upgrade from the 100km…. foolishly talked into the upgrade 🙂

Drove to Bundanoon Saturday and camped in a huge field of cars, tents and caravans, probably more than a 1000 people camping. Luckily everyone had the race on their mind, so even the rowdy beer drinkers one site along were asleep by 10pm. I had packed a full size single bed mattress in my van and was super comfy.

The 20 or so 100Milers were allowed to line up at the front of the hordes of 100km riders, including Jason English and Andrew Hall (back from the Croc Trophy….. must be the name that makes him strong), once we started a fair few of the hordes rocked passed to the front.
Libby was the only female entrant and her aim was to finish as only one other female had ever finished the complete 160km event before, apparently several more have attempted and failed. For a brief moment I thought I would wait and ride with her, but the testosterone took over and I found myself chasing the front bunches.

There was some seriously nice single track in the Wingello forest, well worth a trip out to ride. The first 70km of the event there were riders all around, but then when we had to ride the Wingello 53km loop a second time, the 100km riders had all continued to the finish and it felt like a different event.
About half way around the 2nd Wingello loop I was picking up 100km back markers and slowly but surely it started to get slightly more crowded again. It was great to smash passed people, no wonder as they were all the slow rider of the 100km, giving them some encouragement were possible which they all seem to appreciate.
My legs were on the edge of cramping with about 60km to go and from then I had to slow it down a bit, eat and drink more, and stop the legs from popping hard. Ended up walking more and more hills in the last section, loosing around 10minutes on the guys I was riding with during the last Wingello lap.

Libby started strong but then had a flat, Alex Ramsey (ARNuts, Bilbys) was riding his rigid SS and caught up with Libby and helped her fix the flat with a cartridge, or helped her work out how to use the cartridge :).
After that Alex rode in the vicinity of Libby in case of other mishaps. Seems Lib lost about 15min on mechanicals.
Initially worried she wouldn’t make the cut-off, but ended up with an hour to spare at the last transition out of Wingello forest, and coming into the finish at 9:06hrs.

Libby 1st 100Mile Female 9:06
Bleeksie 12th 100Mile Male at 8:06
Alex 19th 100Mile Male at 9:04

Camera ran out of battery seconds before Libby finished….doh!