Rolled, bowled and arseholed.

Saturday morning, and I have decided on an addition to the course that I normally ride. So, instead of heading West I head South. It's gentle and flat and green, and after 10 miles in half an hour, I turn right cross the river, and start to head west towards the beach. By this time it is after 10a.m and the temperature is starting to rise, but the race will be at this time, so I might as well get used to it. It is not as yet unpleasant, but as I hit what they call 'the divi' which is the first range of hills between the plains and the coast, I get a taste of the rest of the day.
It is fun going down the other side. The corners are tight and steep, and I am going fast enough to hold my own amongst a line of cars, I like that I have the skill to do this, it makes me feel important and slightly superior.
After another 10 miles, I turn right again, and head North. This is deliverance country, and has only recently been sealed. I havn't been through here in years, and never on a bike. It is beautiful, untramelled, the tide is in and there is a breeze blowing off the upper reaches of the harbour. People stop what they are doing, which is mostly sitting, and look vacantly at the loon on the bike.
At 35 miles, I reach the crossroads and turn a mile out of my way to go to the shop at the hotsprings...it is touch and go, but I don't think I have enough water to get me to the school tap at Pukekawa. Mrs Singh calls me "you stupid man", as she piles ice into my drink bottle until it overflows onto her linolium floor...the same floor she had just finished admonishing a man for dripping upon. 15 years ago when she first came here she was a customer of mine...now she smiles and gossips and gouges me $3.50 for a can of coke. It is just after midday by the clock on her wall.
5 miles further on and I am trawling up the hill to the land that my great grandfather bought in 1905, and to which his name is still attached. It still bares the brush strokes of the toil that he painted upon it...bamboo windbreaks, and camellias which over the years have crossbred into variagations of a hundred hues and patterns. I realise with a start, that I am older now than he was when he died in 1912. At the top of the hill, Mrs Singhs water is already warm.
At 50 miles come the three roads to temptation. The westerly is blowing hot, and the tip of my tongue is burning...the road is melting about me, and it makes popping sounds like I'm riding over bubble wrap. I've given up trying to count the hills, and have taken up trying to survive them.
At the top of a god forsaken hill on a nameless stretch of road, there is a small cemetary. In the middle, amongst the graves, is a headstone with a picture of Margaret upon it. She is young and beautiful and dead. One day I will stop to discover her story. Right now though I feel sad that while her beauty lives on her life has been extinguished.
Now, who would call a farm 'Silverado Lodge'...my swarthy mate is who, and it is always with a sense of relief that I see the sign with his name on it. It means the hills are almost gone, and soon I can rest with my figurative toes in the river at Mercer. It is 60 miles, and the skin is starting to peal off the tops of my ears, and I'm covered in a crystaline film of salt.
I read the business section from a discarded newspaper, as I sip tea, swill pepsi, and wait for my sandwich to arrive. The euphoria of Barracks inaugeration has done little to stem the haemorrhaging of the Dow.
I don't want to go, but have run out of excuses to stay. The on ramp to the expressway is steep and painful, and heralds a headwind as I descend down the other side. Come now the hard parts.
Now, in a province called Gaujing in Western China, there is a small wizened woman who works 12 hour shifts in a factory sweat shop. She is bitter and sad at the relentless grind that she has to endure on a daily basis...I'm making this up, but I'm sure a woman just like her made my bike shorts.
In part repayment to the Western world for her straightened circumstance, she has made a rough edge to her stitching. What does she care, that it, now, wet with sweat and toil and salt, starts to sandpaper the skin off my butt.
Finally I'm off the washer board that is the expressway, every bone I have feels rattled, across the river, and down the old highway, my legs feel strong, but everything else is hurting...there is almost orgasmic relief in lifting my butt off the bikeseat. I can see now why cyclists take drugs.
The sun is lowering towards the western hills and I'm into the final 10 miles. I enter almost surreally into a twilight zone, between feeling like I could bike forever, and imminent collapse...the wind is relentless, my water is gone, and I am muttering obscenities.
After 7 hours and 20 minutes I am done. 120 miles of hills, wind and heat. If I wasn't so beaten up I would probably feel elated...the Ironman will not be anywhere near as hard as this.