By Sean Bennett

The Big Bike Ride, which happens on Sunday 22nd March at the end of Bike Week in Brisbane, has now gained the option of starting with a ride over Mt Coot-tha.  This turns the 55km route option into a 70 km route option.  All rides start at Southbank opposite the city.  Apart from the Mt Coot-tha ride they all follow bike paths along the river.  The Mt Coot-tha riders though head over the William Jolly Bridge to the northern end of the city, then head through Paddington and Bardon to the foot of the mountain.  At this point they turn right into Sir Samuel Griffith Drive and begin a 2.2 kilometre climb up a 9% gradient.

Mt Coot-tha is the route I use for training rides on a regular basis so it is not unfamiliar to me.  However there is a catch ? usually I do not make it all the way to the crest past Channel 10 without stalling and needing a rest stop.  This time it seemed diplomatic to make it all the way without stalling.  Normally I attempt the ride with my standard crank length ? 114 mm.  (If Ken can do it then I should be able to do it :))  I know from past experience that I can make the distance with 150 mm cranks however I did not want to complete the remaining 50 kilometres of largely flat terrain with such long cranks.  So I opted for 125mm cranks which should be able to provide flat ground cruising speed without losing hill climbing ability.

Well that was the plan anyway.  For this ride I was wearing my heart rate monitor.  About 300 metres from the crest the road gets steeper and reaches its steepest gradient which it holds for about 100 metres before turning a corner.  This is the crunch point for all riders.  As I started this final hurdle my heart rate, which had been sitting happily on 180 bpm all the way so far, was already up to 185bpm.  There just wasn?t much left in reserve.  This could explain why, just as I almost made it through, I lost my balance and stepped off at the corner.  This was slightly annoying.  However it was as close as I could get to making the full climb without actually doing it.  So it is difficult to be upset.

To my mind once you reach this crest the hard work is done.  Judging from the grumbling and generally bad language I heard from other riders I suspect not everyone shares this view.  But really you have completed the major climb and you are merely riding across the top of the mountain.  Naturally it is not totally flat however the ups and downs along the top are pretty short and manageable.  The ride back down to flatter ground is really great fun on a bike but not so good on a unicycle with only your legs for brakes.  In fact my heart rate averaged 148 bpm for the quarter of an hour it took me to descend.  However after riding it for a couple of years it just does not bother me any more.

The best part this year is the fact that the cyclist overpass has been completed.  It used to be the case that cyclists had to run the lottery of trying to cross the end of the Western Freeway to get from the bike path side of the freeway to the road up Mt Coot-tha.  If this sounds like some sort of joke then please believe me when I say that we were not laughing.  Fortunately the QLD Government and Brisbane City Council recognized the value that Mt Coot-tha has for cyclists as a near perfect training venue with no through traffic and a usefully short and steep section of bitumen, so they initiated work to provide an overpass for cyclists to get from one side to the other.  It was opened barely a week before the ride this year and it is a real joy to ride across it.

However this is where I received a bit of a surprise ? I had expected the route to follow the bike path towards Centenary along the Western Freeway.  Not so.  Instead we headed up another pretty good hill up Dean St.  From there we headed down through the middle of Toowong and out to St Lucia for a lap of QLD University.  Again this is another stretch of bitumen I know well but from my marathon days when I used the lap of the university as a 25 km training run.  You will recall from my earlier comments that I really expected the rest of the ride to be largely flat terrain.  Well instead of ?flat? the roads went up and down like a yoyo all the way through St Lucia, Indooroopilly, Fig Tree Pocket and finally onto the bike path to cross the Brisbane River to the ?half way? point at Jindalee.  I really cannot tell whether this was half way but since it was the furthest distance from Southbank it seemed like it.

At this point I was feeling a bit tired.  There were some lovely long hills on the bike path which I had used to great effect to blow away cyclists and dispel the illusion that a single wheel must be slower.  Once I reached the rest stop a number of them stopped to check out my equipment and learn some more about the world of the single wheel.  It really felt more like a PR session rather than a rest stop.  However I did not stop for very long.  The weather had been perfect for cycling so far however this is Brisbane in March.  The sky was largely cloudless and the sun was hot despite it being autumn.  By now the temperature was climbing to the point that I was relying on the camelbak to provide sufficient water to remain hydrated.  I was fairly keen to complete the ride before it became much hotter.

Naturally as I departed from the rest point the route went up a hill.  After that, for some strange reason, it went up and down a few more hills as it passed through Seventeen Mile Rocks.  It wouldn?t do to make the route too easy would it!!!  I didn?t even know Oxley has hills that steep in it.  There was one dip and climb which was so steep I felt really proud to make it without stopping.  Certainly many of the bike riders around me stalled on that one.

Eventually though we reached Yeronga and the Brisbane Corso which is a road which follows the river and is FLAT.  F ? L ? A ? T FLAT!!!  Well I appreciated it anyway.  Most of the cyclists around me seemed happy about it too.  The trip back from Jindalee was marked by continual conversation.  As one cyclist wound up chatting and decided to press onwards another would take their place and ask about riding unicycles.  I discovered at the next rest stop that we had joined up with the 55 km riders because some girls I was talking to were commenting that some of the riders around us had green wrist bands on so they must have ridden up the mountain.  ?What, you mean like this one?? I asked as I showed them my wrist band.  ?You mean you rode up Mt Coot-tha on that !!!? was the response.

There was one final rest stop at the top of a short sharp hill at Dutton Park.  At this point all the cyclists were pushing their bikes up the hill.  I suppose the serious cyclists had already reached the Finish Line so I was riding with the social riders, many of whom had never ridden this distance before.  So it seemed the only sensible course of action was to ride up the hill and continue past the rest stop without stopping 🙂

This brought me to the climb up Highgate Hill which was literally the last hill on the route.  From here it was down to the river at Hill End then along the river through West End back to Southbank.  It felt good to finish.  I wish I knew how long it took me.  Unfortunately I was intercepted at the Finish Line by more interested cyclists so by the time I addressed all queries to their satisfaction it was some time after I stopped riding.  This was also the time I realized that I had not re-started my heart rate monitor recording again when I left the rest stop at Jindalee.  Consequently the only useful snippet it provided was that the 2.2 kilometre climb took me 19 minutes and 6 seconds at an average heart rate of 181 bpm.  The whole ride took me something less than six hours – which was pretty good.

As I was finishing there was a fairly strong breeze starting up which made me think that it was probably a good time to be not riding any more.  One of the girls I had been talking to along the ride was trying to find her way to East Brisbane not very far from where I live.  She came from northern NSW and was unfamiliar with Brisbane geography.  So I took the long way home and showed her to her street before heading home for some food and rest.  This was my first Mt Coot-tha Challenge because when they ran the inaugural ride last year I was at the beach surfing.  Fortunately this time I was in Brisbane and thoroughly enjoyed it.  Hopefully next year I will be able to repeat the ride.