Cometh the 24hrs, cometh the rain.

The last few weeks had been preparation for the Audax Oppy 24hr team time trial. We had mapped out a 400km route that was mainly gravel. It seemed appropriate that we had named our team the Dirty Dudes as it was indeed uber-dirty. Last week's experiment with equipment has been discarded due to tyre clearance issues and I was back on the bike I should have been on, the Slate. By the end of 24 mucky hours, even the gravel bike needed a little TLC!

It has been so dry recently but the forecast for the Oppy told us we would get wet. It started 2 hours in as we dropped into Macedon and finally stopped after we left Castlemaine 12 hours later, although there were a few dry breaks in there as well. We were all gritty and chain lube was going down faster than free beer at the office party. As Marty would say, "it should be clear by X", insert next checkpoint here, but it rarely did!

We made some questionable route choices down some dodgy single track that burnt time so that we were 40 minutes down by the time he hit Daylesford with 5 hours to go. Little did we know that the support car nearly failed to make it to Daylesford at all. A flat battery necessitated a jumpstart from a good samaritan at 1am in Taradale, no mean feat!

Somehow we clawed the time back after Daylesford and made it to Ballarat with 6 minutes to spare! In between we discovered some majestic gravel roads and our bodies and equipment held up amazingly well considering the conditions and some user error with lighting (who knew that bringing batteries but not the light would be a problem?).

Every bike is a gravel bike

13 of the best from a year of limited adventure

Part 3 - Downhill to the Med

Part 2 - Les Grandes Alpes

Part 1

Finally!