St. Arnaud to Hanmer Springs - Rainbow Rage

Day 23 - Saturday 20 March 2010

Dist: 106 km. Av. Speed: 16.9 km/hr. Cal: 1498. Ride Time: 6 hours 16 min

Well Le Tour just keeps getting better! The Rainbow Rage was just fantastic. It was awesome to be in a field of over 500 riders all snaking up the stunning Rainbow Valley together heading for a hot swim at Hanmer.

It was another perfect day, cool but clear as we arrived at registration at 7.30am. Kim discovered I had a flat tyre overnight so that needed to be fixed before we got going but it wasn’t a drama.

Our team all assembled on the start line for the briefing at 8.45, ready for the 9am gun. Unfortunately some practical joker had decided to leave one gate locked on the road so the start was delayed while that got sorted out; but 1000 wheels finally rolled off the line at 9.30am.

The first 10km were single lane sealed road through sections beech forest and pasture and then we struck the gravel as we entered the valley proper and ventured deeper into the Rainbow Station. It’s a gradual climb with lots of sub-climbs onto various flood plains and back down to the river as you follow the line of power pylons south.

Pete disappeared soon after the rolling start, not to be seen again until the finish as he pushed for class placing. Joris, Frankie (in her first ever MTB event) and I pedalled at a more sedate ‘touring’ pace and took in the amazing scenery. We North Islanders awed at the massive scale of the landscape and I stopped often to try and capture ’that’ photograph.

Joris eventually pulled away as he got into a duel with some other riders and showed his climbing prowess on the hills. Meanwhile the ‘tourists’ stopped for lunch at around the 50km mark before heading into the saddle and the more serious climbs. The next 15km were tough and lots of people were really struggling as the head wind kicked in and the grade steepened. I was worried that we wouldn’t make the cut-off as our average speed dropped to around 7km/k for quite a long time. Then just when most riders were pretty toasted, Island Saddle appears with the sight of about 100 bikers all pushing their mounts up and over the steep hill before dropping into the next valley.

After the saddle, the breeze turned to a tail wind and the grade became a gradual descent so we happily blasted along at 25km/h again past Lake Tennyson and south toward Hanmer.

The final ascent over Jack’s Pass is short but a bit steep just to really finish you off before the super-steep gravel descent and the very welcome sight of the finish line at Hanmer Domain. 106km, 6 and a half hours on the bike and a well deserved bronze class medal for Frankie. A class bronze for Pete too in just over four hours and a very respectable time for Joris (remember he’s got 140km to do tomorrow too) and also a very handy time for ex-Waihi boy Mark Snalom, who we’d stayed with on Wednesday night in Renwick.

Well done everybody - what a fantastic day. And special thanks to Kim who did a wonderful job of support crew making sure everybody had what they needed, when they needed it - it makes a huge difference.

And of course the hot swim was perfect.