Earning my Hells 500 kit on my birthday

The rules: ride 400km. Climb 10,000vm. Do it in under 36 hours.

Simple, right?

This is what happens when you are too scared to just do a plain old Everesting. You do stupid things, on your birthday, because you are depressed and want people to ride with. And sherpas aren't allowed to be jerks to you on your birthday, right?

So, that's how I started my HRS journey. I planned carefully. Got a GPS that had an altimeter; which turned out to be too generous. Set up a base camp and night time spot to stay. Put a party hat on my bicycle and started.

The first day was mostly solo until sunset. I was pretty happily putting out 2.5h laps and sticking to the ride schedule.

I didn't realise it, but there was an Elbert spotto, and a few people remarked on my bike's stylish party hat affixed to the rear saddle bag.

Around lap 2-3 I had a few dramas when a non cycling muggle ran over my basecamp while parking - at least one banana did not survive).

By 4:30/5pm it was getting later in the day, and I'd been reluctant to go too widely asking for support, just posting up a or two on Facebook, hoping to catch a few people climbing Norton Summit.

Things began to get a bit worrisome as I started lap 5 - no sherpas. Just as I was about to get really concerned, Mick S showed up - this is despite breaking him the previous day with too much climbing.

A second base camp got sorted out up the top of Norton, with some higher quality long gloves (mine were MIA, as were my high vis reflective ones); and decent audax reflective vests.

Mick stuck it out for two hard laps, as the temperature fell to 8 degrees C or below at some points - no gloves, no leg warmers. Madness.

Tash organised to meet us, but we accidentally got 20 minutes off schedule - eating, fuelling up, and descending in darkness ate into the schedule.

We pulled off a decent lap as a trio picking up some minutes, and by this time I'd forgotten how daylight savings adjustments worked or the precise intricacies of Numbers (apparently, you can add them up rather than tell your sherpas its X laps of Y m + Z extra). We saw a practical zoo of wildlife - deer, foxes and roos; all on what used to be a major highway - all in the darkness.

After some white knuckle descending (my brakes scare me!) Tash peeled off and Mick was delivered back to his car, we put his lights on my bike and sent me on my way.

JHo had remarked on how good the weather was via facebook; so of course; rolling fog set in. Then with bugger all distance to go; in the coldest part of the course; the GPS acted up - low battery! Off come the gloves, standing around in the cold starting phone recording, saving the track and starting a new one; it took me too long to get rolling.

I arrived back at the original base camp, but then had to shift everything from garage to inside, in cleats, on wood floors without waking people. A tap dancing elephant may have had more success.

I sorted out everything, cleaned bike as best I could; threw protein down my food hole and tried to sleep - this was about 1:30. I didn't get to sleep until 3 with the inability to produce body heat, falling temperatures and blankets.

It was also about here that I realised I'd gone without chamios cream all day. Things were... angry.

I really only needed to be up by 5:30, but I woke up at 5, pre alarm. I managed to get my breakfast cooked for me, and I faffed around having already organised everything the previous night - there was nothing for me to do!

So of course, I got dressed in 5(!) layers for the 8 degree or less temperature, by which time the sun was up and I was immediately warmed. FML.

I also found out there was a heater I could have used to fight off the cold, doh.

I checked Mick and Tash's strava only to find something alarming - they both clocked a lot less than the 1107m lap I had planned (I later checked and should have been clocking 42.2km/1094vm a lap).

No desktop computer, and my GPS gives me too much elevation; I was flying blind. I found the main error - a missing 100m climb I'd forgotten about entirely - but couldn't stomach the thought of 7 repeats of it to 'catch up' - I was fairly sure some sherpas were going to meet me.

I stopped for a few photos of roos; and all of a sudden I was 20 minutes behind. I pushed, and knocked off the remainder of Lap 7 only to find...

... no sherpas. SHhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhiiiiiiiiiiiiiieeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeettttttttttttttttt.

I kept rolling, the ride plan had adjusted my pace to 3h laps from 2.5h by this point; and I was pulling 2:45's - not too bad. Niall found me by following the course backwards; pretty much at the half way point - he earned a double dose of dirt as a result.

After that, it got a lot easier. Others were a maybe to rejoin; and we started measuring the elevation gain to see where the missing 100-150m was.

That got a bit distressing, and I went into hammer mode - it was either the last lap or the second last one. Niall easily caught me on the climbs; and we got down the freeway to find Mat [and Mick] all prepped.

That's when the bad news started rolling in - laps were between 890m and 922m depending on the GPS. I was 200m down per lap. The 3 hours contingency I had allocated just vanished, I was going to need another 3 hour lap.

I'd ticked over 407km as well; so we decided to ditch the longer lap. 10% valley drive repeats? Sure, that sounds OH GOD WHY DOES THIS HURT SO MUCH.

I'd killed my phone tracker because of its Helpful announcement of how slow I was vs PBs over and over; so when I checked back online there was a lot of mystery: Had I stopped? Why wasn't the dot moving?

I cleared that up and Benny rolled in; we ok'd the Radelaide everesting posting and setup a basecamp. I think I got 10-15 loops in, but couldn't hack it. We got a laptop to figure out how far off - it wasn't as bad as I'd feared.

At that point, it became after work Nortons; and we got it over the line with more than 45 minutes; 50-60km and 200vm extra.