Gold in Waihi

Waihi Midsummer Madness – 130km hilly Individual Time Trial

18^th December 2005

Jason Kelly

This event is advertised as New Zealand’s toughest individual time trial and with the course being just under 130km of undulating country that starts in Waihi and passes through Whangamata – Hikuai – Kopu and Paeroa before finishing back in Waihi it certainly lives up to its reputation. The stated rewards of entering are good company, with no wimps or posers, the opportunity to pass through some magnificent scenery and to pit your strength against some vicious stretches of gravity (also known as hills and plenty of them.) In the past, this event had been organised and run by Bevan Jones who unfortunately was killed in Africa earlier in 2005.

 After a bronze medal in this event in 2004 and a bronze medal in the Vet 1 category of the 2005 National Individual Time Trial (and just fourteen seconds off gold!), this event beckoned to me as a challenge. After several weeks of training, targeting time trialing, I seemed to be on course with a solid Thursday evening Dump Block time trial the week of the event.

Driving to Waihi on the Saturday afternoon in torrential rain and cold weather made me wonder why I had ever thought this event was a good idea. However, the weather cleared that evening and warmed up a little. By start time on Sunday morning, over 80 riders started at one minute intervals in numerical order in near perfect conditions – fine, mild and with little wind.

Starting at number 30 at 9am, I quickly tried to establish a good rhythm and settle into the ride. The course starts on a slight false flat and has no real flat pieces in it. After a few minutes I caught and passed rider number 29 and soon after that was suffering up a small climb. I decided I had better ease back as there was still a long way and plenty of climbing to go! Carrying on, I was initially passing a rider about every five minutes and was mentally ticking them off one by one.

The first major descent is quite windy and tight in places with plenty of speed warning signs – 45km/h was a common suggested speed and quite rightly so in places. Luckily traffic was fairly light on this piece of road.

The major climb, which is about 6km in length, is approximately at the midway point of the ride and I spun up this in my 39:21 (first gear) and managed to pass a few more riders. These turned out to be the last riders I would see all day while racing. Crossing the summit, the elapsed time was just over 2 hours with about 60km left to the finish line. The next few kilometres were fast and easy as they were downhill. After that, the false flats and small rises seemed to get bigger and harder!

It seemed to take forever to get back to Pareoa as I waited in vain for a tail wind kick to help me along. Eventually I made it to the finish line in Waihi and my brother Patrick, who was my support crew for the event, gave me good news and bad news – the good news was that I was the fastest finisher so far (in 3hrs 32m 13s) and the bad news was that I was fourteen seconds off the official course record! A story floating around was that the unofficial record is even faster at around 3hrs 26m but the rider was a late entrant so Bevan Jones refused to recognise the effort!  Riders continued to finish over the next couple of hours but my time remained the fastest of the day.

The event attracts many Masters age group riders with the oldest riders being in the H grade (70 years old plus). A Masters Average Standard Time (MAST) is calculated for each rider based on their age, e.g. mine was 4hrs 15m, with a prize for the rider who beats their MAST by the largest amount. This favours older riders with the winner of this category being a G grader (65-69 year old) who recorded 4hrs 05m and beat their MAST by 1hr 23m!

At the prize giving, I collected two gold medals – one for fastest time overall and one for first place in the Masters A grade (35-39 year olds) along with the Challenge Trophy and a Waihi Gold cycling shirt.

The top five finishers in 2005 were:

1^st Jason Kelly 3:32:13
2^nd Dave Mann 3:34:52
3^rd Paul Westwood 3:41:02
4^th Jeff Lyall 3:46:33
5^th Wayne Mason 3:47:14

A target time of 3hrs 25m to ensure the record is beaten sounds like a challenging 2006 target!