Team South - Day 2 - Sun April 15
Our goal today was to have fun on the highest paved, through, road in New Zealand…aka The Crown Range Road. There is, of course, two sides to that story:
- The good news: a 500m, 14.5km descent from the top of the pass to the Cardrona pub where company, coffee, food and a log fire beckoned on a chilly morning, followed by a very leisurely 25km flat tide to the finish in Wanaka.
- The less good news: we had to work hard to get there – a 700m, 11km climb to the top, though the warm-up was pleasant – a 20km ride across the Wakatipu Basin to Arrowtown, the poplar trees glowing in their autumn colours early on a sunny 5c morning.
As soon as we had got to the start, we were buoyed by encouraging news: Hikurangi Team South was the lowest ranking NZ team in the race – only the four Hong Kong teams, made up as far as we can tell of students unused to cycling, are behind us.
This accolade we’d won through excellent execution of clever team tactics: we ride to enjoy, to stop a few times for food and views and to ensure we can get back on our bikes the next day.
So, while the Christchurch Boys High School team took yesterday’s line honours, covering 144 km in 4 hours 6 minutes, we’d taken 6 hours 40 minutes. But we had a cunning plan for the rest of the stages in the race. We have room for one more rider each day so we could rope in a solo rider.
The one offered to us was Gary, who happens to be the boys’ coach. So we let him do the hard racing out front with his team while we at the back stop for coffee. An excellent division of labour, we thought, each team member playing to his or her strengths.
Our official new team member today was Graham, an Otago organic farmer. Graham and his wife Gisellle stayed with us last night, cooking us lots of their wonderful lamb, which certainly improved our performance today. Graham, a keen swimmer and a sometime cyclist, was stoked to have pulled off such a big day on the road.
Rounding out our team today and tomorrow we have Daryl and Hamish, friends of Rod’s who are mad keen, fast Canterbury riders, members of the Ricoh Boys, as the company’s riders are known.
And last but by no means least we had the company of a peloton of Queenstown Pedallers, Rod’s South Island club. Peter, their leader, has been coaching Freda and Ashlee, co-captains of our North Island team, and Sarah and Rod, our Southern co-captains, in preparation for the Tour.
A bunch of their quick riders popped over the hill well before us, had coffee at Cardrona and waved to us as they flicked back over the hill to Queenstown. The more leisurely among them stopped on top for a photo with us, then lingered over coffee before driving home.
We would have stayed a bit longer at Cardrona but the Tour driver responsible for picking up stragglers told us we had to leave.
To cap off a great day, Sarah, Graham and Rod were the last three riders home. We think we played this to perfection, maintaining our preferred finishing position.
We have one nagging worry, though. A team’s time each day is taken on its third placed rider. So if Gary, Daryl and Hamish had got a bit carried away, we might have lost our perfect place to the Fiordland Fliers, a local ladies team.
We’ll know tonight at the daily prize-giving. If our worst fears are realised, we’ll obviously have to up the ante. Tomorrow we’ll stop twice for coffee.
