Rotorua-to-Taupo Anna Flyer

After plenty of badgering from me, and a lot of training from Anna, the big day finally arrived when Anna (and I) was competing in the 100K Flyer from Rotorua to Taupo. She has been putting in lots of training, and despite plenty of nerves and stress on her part, I knew she was ready.

We were staying down in Taupo, so that meant we had to drive up for the 10am race start in Rotorua. Despite some worrying forecasts earlier in the week, the day had dawned near perfect conditions - high cloud and hardly a breath of wind. We headed towards the rear of the 2000+ riders and slowly moved up through the waves of starters. We were finally off and Anna started off nice and strong. However, the cruel twist to the 100K Flyer is that it begins with a long steady climb out of Rotorua for the first 10km or so. Anna was finding this pretty tough (she always finds the first part of her rides tough, and the long delay between breakfast and actually starting the race probably didn't help either), but I knew once we had gotten through this climb it would be relatively easy. And the reward was a good long descent down the other side of the hill, and passing lots of riders that had gone past us up the hill.

The next 70km of the ride is then relatively flat, covering the rolling countryside of the Waikato. Anna really hit her straps and we were often averaging 30kph and having small groups drafting behind us. This was a very pleasant part of the ride and Anna was surprised about how quickly it went by. The only disturbing part was the amount of carnage on the road - I've never ridden past so many people being attended to on the side of the road or had so many Ambulances whiz by. It must have been at least four times that we rode past a rider or riders with strapping on cuts or arms in slings.

Fortunately there were no problem around us and it was pretty soon that Anna just had the last climb up into Taupo before the finish. She was pretty tired by now - which I would now say was probably partly because of dehydration, as I found out at the end she still had plenty of water left - but I reminded her that it was just this last climb. It isn't that hard of a climb, but after 90km it seems that it is (I should know, I had to do it twice in the Ironman), and me racing up it a couple of times to take photos probably didn't help. After a few 'false summits' and many "how much further Papa Smurf", we finally turned down into the last couple of (downhill) kms to the finish.

Speeding down the hill - picking up a few places, though I think more importantly to Anna, getting to the finish line so she could get off that bike seat - we finally reached the finish line in the time 3.46:17. That's an average speed of 26.5kph, which is much faster than Anna's usual average speed on her long training rides. So thoughts of being tired were quickly dispelled by feelings of achievement, and I was very proud of little Anna.