Before last weekend, I had only been to three countries. Canada, USA and Australia. A few months ago, the buddies that I ride with invited me to a race in New Zealand and I jumped at the chance. The race was the Lake Taupo Cycle Challenge; 160km of grueling cycling followed by a pretty good party.

We had trained hard leading up to the race and were grateful that it was scheduled for November and not January because we had started to crack mentally. You can only train at race pace for so long without questioning if you cycle as a fun hobby that ends with a coffee or because you enjoy the torture.

The five that headed over from Sydney got delayed at the airport for two hours and everyone but me knew the secret handshake that allowed you into the Qantas Lounge. The privileged four flashed a card and sneaked me into the mysterious lounge that I had heard so much about but assumed was a myth that millionaires told common folk. For the first time I enjoyed a flight delay, perfectly comfortable enjoying my free breakfast and glugging freshly squeezed orange juice.

Because the other team members had raced here before, logistics were a breeze. Our (painfully) disciplined leader Carl had organized everything. With military precision we moved from the airport to the rented SUV’s and on to Taupo and our rented house for the weekend. I quickly realized that although this weekend was planned for a bike race, it was really a guy’s long weekend that happened to have a bike event on the Saturday. The true purpose of the race was to provide ammunition for conversation (read: taunting) for the next 12 months.

The pre-race verbal sparring and mind games were epic. The trash talking reached a high the night before the race and admittedly, my confidence was wavering. The target for the 160km was 5 hours and it was going to be close. That pace would require everything to fall into place and to possibly sacrifice of a kidney to avoid a piss stop.

The race probably deserves its own blog entry but I’ll summarize as best as possible. The start line could only be described as controlled chaos. The 11,500 riders completely engulfed the Main Street that normally catered to Taupo’s 22,000 residents. Everywhere you looked there were riders within 3 inches of one another. Making things even more nerve racking was the rain that poured down making the roads slick and the sunglasses foggy. It didn’t take long for the first ambulance to come racing past and every 10 minutes or so a rider was on the side of the road with either a flat tire or road rash. Our team managed to navigate the crowd pretty well for the first half and then everything blew apart and I was separated. I hammered the pace up the hills (that’s what skinny guys do) and that seemed like a good idea at the time but proved to be my undoing. Sure, I set a blistering pace to the summits but was completely shattered and couldn’t keep up with the tempo riding on the flats afterward. By the end of the race I had gained about 9 minutes on the hills and lost…damn near 25 minutes on the flats!

With 7 kilometres to go, at the base of a small hill, my body was not pleased with me and I had lost focus when a huge sign came into view and cheered me up. “This hill is a bitch!” The part that made it so funny was that the sign wasn’t handmade or chalked on the road – the organizers (who clearly had keen eye for detail) had it professionally made. I crossed the line in 5 hours 12 minutes and couldn’t have pushed any harder. Next year though, it’s on. Thanks to the guys for a great weekend and the race organizers for running such a fantastic event.