Molesworth Muster completed, next please

Looking back, we started riding tandem together in early September, about 9 weeks ago. I had never ridden a tandem before, and Logan had never gone off-road. Together, this was all new and exciting.
On Friday, we loaded up the car and headed to Hanmer. We were taking the shuttle to Molesworth, so loaded our gear and bike on the truck and chatted to people about the race and the tandem. Aboard the bus I was keeping an eye on the road as this was the track we're riding back out on and the last hill (Wards Pass) was a sudden and dramatic surprise. I hate hills, and this one was a doozy.
We arrived at the campsite, registered and I set Logan to work erecting the tent. Once up, it was dinner time, and Logan ate some weird meal-in-a-can while I fired up the gas ring and had hot burgers and espresso coffees. The temperature was dropping rather fast once the sun had fully set and it was only going to get colder as the night progressed. I was wearing all my nice thermal layers, and the night passed in an icy blur.

Sunrise and we were woken by the sounds of the campsite rising with the sun. Cold? You betcha! Each tent had a dusting of frost on it and all the bikes scattered around were white and frozen to the ground. Nice. We wolfed down some food, collapsed the tent, packed the bags and stuffed them back on the truck, then waited, shivering, in the cold for the race briefing and start. As the morning progressed it began to warm up, a lot, and those thermals became a burden rather than a benefit. Thankfully we could offload them at the start of the race.
We positioned ourselves towards the back as it's pretty much all uphill on the way out, and this turned out to be a bad idea. The hooter sounded and we were off. Slowly. Very slowly. Almost 600 bikes on a single lane gravel road don't move fast. We moved with the flow, trying hard to adjust speed by fractions so we don't collide with others (tricky on a tandem) and after the first small hill we start to overtake a few people, however, making headway is difficult, so we take it easy, Wards Pass is not far away and I don't want to burn out before we get there. In the small hills from the start line we notice that our uphill is not too bad, but our downhill is way faster than others.
We start up Wards Pass, and as it gets steeper and steeper, my lungs start to explode. Eventually I pull the plug and we walk the rest. We're not the only ones walking up this hill, and it's only a small amount slower than riding up. We have 70km to go, so don't kill yourself now. At the top we climb back on and there is a high speed descent down to the valley below. Wow. Fast? Yes indeed. We overtake about 10 people on the downhill, but I'm trying to maintain control rather than set a speed record.
At the bottom we cross the bridge and into the long flat sections. Here is where we can shine, and we do. During the next 20km we overtake massive amounts of people. We are cruising at 30kph+ and because of our momentum and speed we're collecting a tail of people slipstreaming behind us - about 9 or 10 at one stage. We manage to lose them at the first of the fords. We had a game plan for these - low gear, steady entry, peddle out, hold the line. And it works well. Very well. Our exit speed is high and once we're back to our cruising speed we have left our passengers behind and they can't catch us under the own steam.
This is the nicest ride we have done off-road. We're moving fast, holding 30kph, overtaking lots of people and feeling good. Our goal is to cross the finish line at about 4hrs. We are realists tho, and just finishing is the real #1 goal. When we pass the halfway mark, we're a touch over 2hrs, so on target. The uphills slow us down, and we get overtaken lots, but we take it back on the downhills and straights, and with almost 50km under the wheels we have made up a massive gain on the field. Logan does some quick roadside repairs and we blast off again.
The bike is going well, Logan has shot some videos while we fly downhill (mad!) by holding the camera in one hand, and the bike in the other: 

The sun is shining, the day is warm, everything is going to plan. Yup, this is usually where things start to go wrong, and today is no exception. We've ironed out most of the bugs in the bike, and broken all the bits that we're going to break, so this time it's human failure. Logan's hamstring starts to make noises that hamstrings really shouldn't make. Logan starts making noises like someone who is in constant pain and suffering. And as hard as I try, I can't ignore him for long. Our speed drops, we walk a few hills, and drift downhill so he can stretch. A couple of stops along the way to get some proper stretches in, but it's a slow uphill now, more up than down, and we're losing places rapidly. Still, the plan of finishing in one piece is way more important than beating any time we set ourselves. Over the next 10km we have more than halved our speed. We're looking forward to, and dreading, the final climb up to the top of Jollies Pass - the last hill.

Turns out, the hill I was most worried about climbing is nowhere as hard as I expected. We manage to spin our way to the top, and now it's all downhill. 400m descent in about 3-4km means high speed downhill time. Well, about halfway down, we hit a rut that has been gouged in the road and the wheel turns and locks into it. I can see spokes when I shouldn't be able to. We're going fast tho, and momentum pops us back out of the rut and back onto the road. I saw our front wheel bend and snap in half, I swear, yet we're rolling well, still spinning nicely. Disaster averted.

However, it's a long downhill and we're using plenty of brakes. I was wondering if the poor little rubber pads were going to last the distance. (oh for disks!) About 1km from the bottom of the hill we hear a loud hissing noise from the front wheel. Puncture. Big one. We manage to come to a stop (something I wasn't sure we were going to achieve) and discover that the front brakes have heated up the rim so much it's melted a hole in the tube. It's so hot we can't touch the rim for some time to change the now-soft tyre, but make the swap in about 15mins. The rims have cooled, and I'm fairly sure we'll make it all the way down without more damage, and we do. The last tiny bit of the track is the scariest of all. Through a narrow singletrack of trees and tree roots is not impossible, however there are two massive drops down to the thinnest bridge I have ever seen:

A slight right, over a bridge 400mm wide, then a sharp right. On a tandem. I was sure we (or rather Logan) was going over the side - there was no way in this lifetime we were going to make it across that bridge with those angles on a tandem. Surely? To my absolute surprise, we made it across. I could breathe again! A short hill, then quick dash to the finish line and we were home!!!

Final time? 5:10:11 - about an hour slower than we wanted, but we were in one piece, and the bike had made it to the end!

So, not a perfect result, but a damn good first effort. As the pain subsided and the beer & wine soaked the muscles, we decided that yes, we would do this again next year. And, we'll do some hill training too - we had only done 3 hill rides before this ride!!!

Talk moved to 'what next' and muttering about the Rainbow Rage have surfaced. It's not till March, so we'd have more than twice the time to train as we have so far.

So, major adventure #1 is complete, time to assess what we need to work on, change, upgrade and fix, then we'll eat and drink too much over the silly season and be fat and slow for the new year. Training will continue until one of us is broken permanently.