Last Day of the Tour – Jindabyne to Canberra. 185kms

Early wake up at 4.30 in Jindabyne as we needed to fuel up for freezing temperatures and a 185km ride into Canberra. Thankfully we had the warmth of the hotel function room to have breakfast – most of the brekkies on tour were outside. Over the 10 days I found that the best breakfast for me was a full bowl of porridge, yoghurt and fruit, 3 eggs on toast, 2 bananas, and a honey/peanutbutter sandwich was about right. + also a flat white and a piccolo before rolling out. By the way, lunch and dinner were also 3 course hot meals to keep us going.

The whole morning routine was like clockwork after 10 days of practice on tour, and we loaded our clothing bags and laptop bags into the truck, and our shoe bag into the car that was lead for the peleton that day.

I had every piece of cycling clothing on. Base layer, thermal shirt, cycling jersey, wind vest, windstopper jacket, arm warmers, full leg warmers, headband, cap, toe warmers inside shoes, overshoes, and full length gloves. As we rolled out of Jindabyne the temperature on my bike computer registered 0.0, and I wondered if it wasn’t designed to show subzero? That question was soon answered as we got out of town and over the dam wall, with the temperature dropping consistently down to -5.6deg.

The cold was ok while we were climbing out of the hills around Jindabyne. My heart rate refused to get above 100, even though it was a pretty steep climb. Then one of the riders had a mechanical (a flat or chain problem), so we all slowed down to 20kmh while it was fixed and he paced back on. Man, was that cold. It took until the sun was high in the sky around 9am before it got above zero, and by then it was a glorious Autumn day.

Rolling hills, good formation of the peleton in 2 lines, and rolling at about 35kmh average. I did 50km or so in the small group of 6 on the front that drives the pace, which was good to keep warm and to keep us all moving on schedule.

We had lunch in Michelago at a country fair – the announcer welcomed us in and we had a few interested people coming over to chat.

And then into Canberra, with a few flat tyres along the way – including one on the lead Lexus car. After re-forming into 1 peleton we did a few laps of Parliament house for some film footage, and then over the Lake to Regatta Point and Commonwealth Park, where there was a huge fanfare and welcome line from locals and our families. It was just brilliant to see all of my family in the crowd cheering me through, and my Uncle and cousins also came to cheer me home.

Dinner at the press club that evening was sensational – a beautiful piece of rare steak, some red wine, and lots of hugs and pats on the back all round.

Brilliant.