Riding Sydney to Surfers With Hammer

Howdy

For those following my training for the Sydney to Surfers ride here’s a quick update. I’ve finished.

Yep, the 2007 Sydney to Surfers finish this time last week and I rode close on 1,000 km over 7 days. It was a fantastic ride with a lot of terrific people

Day 1 – Searing Heat

Day 1 was probably the toughest with 37 degree C heat (that’s 98.6 F) – by the time that bounced off the road it would have been well above 40 degree C (104 F).

We finally finished Day 1 only to set up camp and for the rain to come tumbling down.

Ride veterans told me this was the toughest day they’d ever encountered.

Day 2 was a different sort of challenge with:

• driving rain,
• howling winds,
• cold temperatures (15 degrees C)

Day 3 was an easier 120km – we started in driving rain but that eased during the day.

Day 4 was a much easier day with the weather being a bit kinder to us.

Day 5 was a real tough day with a very long climb over the ranges and high temperatures again.

This 150 km day ended in Grafton.

Day 6 was another tough day with high temperatures and a nice crash in our Pack where 2 guys went down and another ended up balancing his bike on top of one of the fallen bikes.

Then our Support Car broke down after blowing a radiator hose.

Most of the day was pretty flat – long straight roads with no wind and no trees.

Day 7 was when we were looking forward to a nice easy roll into the finish. But the start of the day doesn’t allow that with 2 large climbs (36 km) before morning tea.

The rest of the day was a nice 90 km into the finish at Southport Yacht Club.

Idiots In A Car

And sure enough, out of the 1,000 km ride the only problem from a car was when we hit my home town when some clown in a car threw a bottle at us about 20 km from the finish.

The car – with 3 young guys in it – weren’t too smart as they had to line up at a Stop sign about 50 metres up the road.

They looked a little nervous when there were 16 rather large guys around their car with one very angry Scotsman screaming at them to “Get out of the car!”

The copper in the group will be dealing with those lads!

Hammer Products Used

I used Hammer products exclusively – HEED whilst on the bike, Hammer Gels before and during the riding and Recoverite at the end of each day.

They worked fantastically well and I felt great and energetic the whole way. So thanks for the support Hammer! For endurance nutrition I simply can’t imagine anything better.

And thanks to everyone who has purchased via this site over the past few weeks – the Hammer guys are donating 10% of Internet sales to me for the charity (for sales between March 16 and April 16).

Check out the official Sydney to Surfers site here.

Thanks

Brendon