TDC Wrap

Can I just say that Tour was AWESOME! 10 days of amazing countryside, scenery, great people and cycling was something that I never really expected.

Arriving into Canberra after riding over 1500km was a little surreal, emotional and also a great sense of achievement. It’s actually a really long way!

Throughout the 10 days we visited countless local communities, and spread the cancer awareness message around being Fit, Happy and Healthy to about 4,000 school kids.

Cameradery amongst the cycling group was great, and very supportive. The highlights for me were meeting Anna Meares and cycling with her out of Adelaide, the day we cycled 220km in a single day where I felt great, and visiting this tiny school in the SA country called Frances. This was a school of only 26 kids from K – Yr7 in the middle of no where – but a bloody beautiful place on what seemed like farmland.

The challenge of the ride up Dead Horse Gap is something that’s hard to explain. It was a long day – leaving Khancoban at about 6am in the dark, starting off with an 11km steady climb, then hitting the start of the major climb about 30km later. Riding uphill for close to an hour and a half for about 18km is hard! But getting to the top and that sense of achievement was bloody amazing.

All in all I loved it. The hardest part of the 10 days was the final morning leaving Jindabyne in temperatures ranging from -2 to -6 for the first 2 and a bit hours. It was painful and mentally draining. Needless to say there was a point I actually had to stop and try and warm my hands up which had completely frozen and lost feeling.

TDC this year has raised close to $2.4m, which is absolutely amazing. I’ve done my small piece and raised just over $12k (which was my target). I’m blown away by the support.

All I need to do now is sit back and decide on what the next challenge is going to be!

Rushtown