Amy's Ride (Brisbane-Gold Coast) 9 Dec 2006

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Well, here's my ride report

The Amy gillet Foundation promotes safety on the road, and harmony between cyclists and drivers. So the first thing I dad After checking in I pulled out my sharpie and write "KATHY" on my wrist band. In honour of another fantastic woman also a victim of "not sharing the road. Thanks Trek, Duck, UK and Maury.

We were led out by Sarah Carrigan, (Aussie road cycling Super woman!) and Henk Vogels (Davitamon Lotto) and a whole host of other stars.

I was drafting off them. ^_^ It was great! We were doing 33km per hour! for the first 15km! It was great. ^_^

For the 45km distance there were 105 of us.

The thing that sucked though was the traffic lights... It really seperated us out into groups.

Before long two little kids on FANTASTIC looking road bikes overtook me and I lost the peleton. I was kinda cool

Amy Gillet's Parents. Her mum looked Awesome in her bright pink Jersey with the foundations logo. Her parents had OCRs and passed me after halfway.

Speaking of halfway... About half the peleton went the wrong way... I followed them by accident.

When we all hooked up with them again... the detour had only cost us 1km.

The gold coast ride was great. We were in bike lanes all the way... the traffic wasn't too bad and we had the VOLVO catch up to us a certain points for photo oppurtunities... That was nice. The coolest part was at the beginning when we had police escort and could take up the lanes... Although it disgruntled one driver who didn't want to wait behind us. The cops got onto him pretty quickly.

Anyway... The head wind coming back into surfers paradise was NIGHTMAREISH. the road was perfectly flat, and the group of four BF and I had tagged onto all suddenly dropped 5kph of speed... as did we. It was NUTS...

Only with the shelter of the trees in the last 400m did BF and I manage to sprint it home. ^_^


So after that we sculled water, Endura (was reallly yummy) and went and had breakfast.

After that we ran back to the finish line to watch Amy's Husband Simon leading the peleton of the 100km riders in...

Among the group

AIS sportsmen and women
QAS sportswomen
Les Mills, (the NEW ZEALAND guy who invented Body pump for all you Aussie Gym Junkies)
Robbie McEwen and other Davitamon lotto riders
Rabobank
Matt Wright from the Discovery Channel team

all in all 1200 riders did the 100km version of the ride.

2mins after the lead group came in, Lorian Graham came in. Solo. Wearing an Amy Gillet jersey.

Lorian was also severly injured in the crash that killed Amy. She only competed for the first time last weekend and it was a privledge to see her cross the line.

All in all a great morning. I'll post photos when they come online.

Average speed. 23kph
Max: 38.5kph
Distance 45km
Riders (total) 105

Oh yeah... and did I mention I got home and slept for 4 hours???

here's cycling News version of events
http://www.cyclingnews.com.au/news.p...2006/amys_ride