The Cheeky Dabbler

Evening friends,

As the dust from both long and short course pinnacles in Kona and Auckland settles, it would appear that most of the athletic fraternity are now happily wallowing in perhaps the most sangfroid word of the triathlete vernacular, aka ‘break’. Having made neither the trip to Kona or Auckland (cognisant recognition of my current ability preventing the former, and a lower back ailment preventing the latter), my season was slightly bereft of competition worthy mark as the end of my season. As the medically diagnosed ‘Busted Arse Syndrome’ would prevent running with any real velocity, I’ve decided to have a cheeky dabble at arguably Australia’s toughest one day cycling race, Grafton to Inverell. At 228km, and featuring a sinister 17.5 km climb, the race has been known to eat riders whole, with the ease and regularity of Wilson eating a Curlywurly on the way to swim training. Given I’m about as experienced with this sort of racing as Paris Hilton is with fine literature, I’m approaching the race with a healthy amount of ignorance, hopefully offset with equal amounts of enthusiasm. Time will tell which holds stronger after 6-7 hours of racing...

On a personal note, a certain amount of inspiration was gained by many performances at Auckland and Kona, none more so than those of Dave Dellow and the U/23 Boys. Dellow, a long time collaborator, all-round-good-guy, and infamously one half of the Delson combination, bagged a top ten first time out at Kona, and watching the U/23 lads at Auckland execute a brilliant race was truly a pleasure to watch. 

Stay tuned for a race report from saturday’s 228km peregrination, hopefully not featuring a pyroclastic explosion over the last half of the race. No promises though...

Take care friends,

Willy