Day 5 – Horsham to Bendigo 230km – EPIC DAY

Today was one of those days that either breaks you or makes you. I’m hoping its the latter…it feels that way right now but I’ll tell you more tomorrow night. With four successive days of 110km, 142km, 180km, 175km under our belt and no recovery time except sleep (followed by a 5am wake)…we are all starting to feel the hurt. Today was set up to be a big one. Team CommBank led the way this morning by joining Beretts for his sports crossings from 5.15am this morning at St Michaels Catholic Primary school in Horsham. It was around 5 degrees so we were rugged up and the Vittoria coffee was flowing as usual. The way it worked out, once we had done a number of live crossings on Sunrise, played little athletics with the kids and then did our presentation, we didn’t get on the road until 9.30am – some 4.5 hours later! More on the ride shortly…

The schools are the absolute highlight and St Michaels didn’t disappoint. Whilst randomly walking inside the school to find the toilet, I bumped into the head mistress who gave me an impromptu tour of the entire school! The kids classrooms are all activity based so no fixed seating and no class structure. This is very “new” school. Kids have home zones and huddle each morning around their goals and then explore the campus to do what they need to do. CommBank people reading this at this point might be saying this sounds a little familiar…Anyhow you can imagine her surprise when I said we had a similar set up at CBA. This is a pilot going on at the school and only primary – high school will take a little longer to adapt apparently. I dont think its the kids by the way.

While I think of it, we hit a massive milestone today for Tour de Cure. TDC hit $10 MILLION in funds raised at 3pm this afternoon (cumulative over the 6.5 years the foundation has been in existence). This is absolutely amazing and is down to people like you reading this blog. Give yourselves a pat on the back and then help us hit $11m. We still have 5 days till we hit Canberra and that would be pretty special.

Anyway the ride which was around 8 hours long today kicked off late. I led the peloton out with Steve and we hit hard cross and head winds for the first 70km. It was a really tough stretch and required all our guts in the engine room (front 6 riders) to muscle through it. Time kept on jumping on us and after a late start, and several channel 7 shots for the TDC documentary AND a 10km detour because we went the wrong way, we all started to realise it was going to be a very long day, get very cold and we would be arriving in the dark. The middle slog was solid and we managed to get to the school for lunch around 1.30pm. The peloton ahead of us had already done the presentation so we just ate and played footy with the kids and sang Taylor Swift and OD (One Direction) songs with them. As Taylor would sing, we were in trouble as leaving late, we had a big afternoon ahead.

Today is where team CBA really showed her true grit as a team. All of us – Tim, Dave, Rachelle, Danny, Michael and Heidi spent considerable turns on the front. With a group of only 16, it was essential to keep refreshing riders at the front and we worked our guts out. We are such a good team – the talk and chat is so positive and we all get on as if we have known each other for 30 years. Quite uncanny really but goes to show what good work cultures can do outside work as well. Heidi and Rachelle were the stand outs for me as they are the strongest women in the Tour and they powered away at the front for solid stints today never faltering. The two of them were punching their pedals like two sewing machines and really led a smooth ride.

The magical part of the ride today was around 50km out of Bendigo when the sun started to set and we got one of those magical moments where the orange sun set was filtering through the trees behind us and lighting our way. Danny and I were on the front and felt like we could fly. Unfortunately cameras don’t do justice to this. Although Channel 7 are going to make a red hot go of it as they filmed us for pretty much the entire way in. Hope we do get our Team on it given our efforts!

Finally rolled into Bendigo a little after 7pm only to do lightening turnaround to get to our community dinner tonight. We had a big turnout from Bendigo region from CBA so some people to meet and greet. I’m now sitting in bed writing this blog and becoming progressively more weary. BUT what an absolutely rewarding amazing day. The teamwork and camaraderie built in 8 hours could not be replicated. We had all got through something quite special. Beretts was very excited and did a few interviews at the motel for good measure to capture the moment.

Dinner was again very rewarding – however some very sad stories from two men who had lost their wives to breast cancer at very young ages. It is very inspirational how people pick themselves up again.

Tomorrow we will be in PINK commemorating TDC’s big $10m milestone – there was a special riding jersey made up and we will all be in it tomorrow – watch this space tomorrow. We are backing up with 180km tomorrow. I must get to bed….what a day, what a memory…I will cherish it

Photo of our team who rode in tonight – Im at the back centre with my hat turned up (pink) Beretts centre stage – this was going to Sunrise