Riding hot

You alright, mate?’ he calls from inside his air-conditioned ute.

Draped over my bars in between laboured breaths, I reply, ‘All good. Just suffering a bit.’

‘You got enough water? It’s bloody hot already.’

‘About four litres,’ I gasp.

‘Good luck, mate. Try to have fun,’ he says as he pulls away in a cloud of dust.

I look down at my Garmin and the temp is reading 33°C; and then at my watch. 7:22am. I push off and clip in; the heat hits me like a pulsating wave. Jersey flapping in the wind, sweat dripping from everywhere, my face throbbing – my body has entered into the dire-straits ‘you need to cool me down right now’ phase, and we’re only an hour in.

I can just see my riding companions disappearing around the bend, with a 14% ramp between them and me. This is going to be a doozy.

The plan had started with a set of wheels. Mike Blewitt, whom you may know as the man at the helm of Australian Mountain Bike mag, had organised a wheelset for my new 29er and had them waiting for me at his home in Samford, Queensland. Rather than just drive up from where I live on the Gold Coast to pick up the wheels, we decided to make a day of it and head out for a gravel ride.

The route took us from the sleepy rural town of Dayboro, which is about 25km from Samford and 50km north-west of the Brisbane CBD. Over a route of mostly gravel, the plan was to ride from the valley up to the prominence of the D’Aguilar Range and follow the ridgeline over to Mount Mee, finishing off with rolling descent back into Dayboro for a cafe feed. While our planned route was on the shorter side of the average Big Ride, the 1,378m of climbing along