Daren Armstrong - Blog

Day 9: Launceston to Swansea

By the time you are reading this the ‘Tour’ will have finished and the team relaxing in the beautiful city of Hobart but not to get ahead of ourselves let’s do a recap on the penultimate day, Saturday 5th April. We stayed at the Grand Chancellor hotel last night and it was by far the most luxurious accommodation we’ve had so far – spacious rooms and big comfy beds. No excuses for not getting a good (but short) sleep, unless your roomie snores like a train. I have been very lucky on the snoring front with all my roomies, like myself, being silent sleepers. There have been some horror stories however which invariably resulted in sleep deprived and unhappy riders the following morning. Anyway, we are getting down to the pointy end of proceedings so let’s get on with the next installment from Willie. Oh, and in case you have wondered, Willie is definitely NOT me. He is an independent on tour reporter who compiles and publishes this material each day.

“Hi folks, it’s a sore, weary, but smiling Willie Maykit here, stretched out on the edge of the beach in Swansea sipping an ice cold beer with the world’s most amazing people! Hobart is now close enough that I can feel it. I’m starting to believe I might just make it!

Firstly, back to last night. Dinner was at the Launceston Grand Chancellor and we had a really big contingent of guests and the room was overflowing. There was a good buzz in the room.

As always we presented our jerseys:

• Awareness: Matt Fulton
• Attitude: Geoff Coombes
• Focus: Garrick Transell
• Doer: Mal Heath
• Guts: Simon Martin
• Inspiration: Mark Beretta

The alarm went off at 5:45am and it was game on for another day……

I was looking forward to today as the schedule was nice and simple – no school or corporate visits, the distance seemed ok (in relative terms) and it was team time trial day…..bring it on. The initial ride out of Launceston was a tad chilly (6 degrees) and up the big hill we belted down the afternoon before. The legs eventually warmed up, but I must admit I didn’t get comfortable on he saddle until much later.

We reached the team time trial location along the road to the Great Lakes after about 50k’s and split into our smaller teams for the 8km course. The team TT is something that occurs each year for a bit of fun and allows bragging rights for the team that wins. How it works is that each team rides against the clock and the team with the fastest time wins…simple.

We all ride in a single line to keep most riders out of the wind. As the lead rider fatigues, they roll off and move to the back to recover and so it goes. We were pushing hard.

My heart rate was hitting 180 bpm and when we sped under the helicopter drone that was filming us, we would have been doing 50kph!

We had morning tea at the end of a crop dusting airfield and the crop duster unexpectedly buzzed by us a few times for fun and some great photos. The pilot was happy to take time out of his day and do some low flybys for us – great action for the film crew to capture. His payment for all this – a coffee and some muffins and lamingtons…things are simple in the country. 

The ride to lunch was long, into a head wind and on a very dead road surface, plus there was a lot of uphill so it was tough going. Luckily the weather here in Tassie has been beautiful and the sun was very pleasant on my back. We then had lunch next to Lake Leake which was stunning. We sat around the foreshore eating ribs, veggies and mash followed by crumble and ice cream….feed that engine!

The final 30k’s to Swansea was mostly downhill and the view over the coast was awesome. We were escorted into town by the local fire engine and SES and we were greeted by the locals in numbers. Wow, what a day. It’s only 4:30pm and we are in Swansea. One to go.

Bring on Hobart!

Willie Maykit”

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