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Today was finally the first day of the Ride for Youth. All the training, and the endless fundraising would finally culminate in the beginning of the ride. I was excited and keen to get on with the riding! However, the start of the day was a mere 5km roll from our home-away-from-home at the Dog Rock Motel down to North Albany High School, where the ride would officially start. Call it a warm-up!

We arrived at NASHS and were welcomed by the students who were going to join us for the official start by rolling out of the school together with us, as well as a friend who has also come out to meet us.

The students, teachers, and officials gave us a great welcome. There were some official speeches, which included a traditional welcome / blessing from the local Noongar representative and some words from Mark Waite from Youth Focus on the services YF provides to young people identified as at risk of suicide, depression and self-harm.

After this, Bill Marchbank and I were scheduled to say a few words from a rider’s perspective. By way of introduction, Mark kindly presented me with some ‘L’ plates for being the youngest rider on the ride. I’m looking forward to switching them over to the ‘P’ side once we reach the finish in Perth Luckily for me, Bill had agreed to do the hard yards by speaking first, and he did very well at this. Afterwards, I said my piece, which to be frank I can’t remember much of because my brain was a bit shut down being nervous whilst I was saying it. Apparently it was fairly well-said and everyone was kind enough to congratulate me afterwards.

(slight exaggeration there: I spoke about personally getting stronger from the training for the ride, not being particularly sporty as a youngster, and also encouraging the students to think about their dreams and set some goals to get them on their way to achieving these. But the bit about being nervous is true!)

*Then* the ride was finally under way with an enthusiastic send-off from everyone at NASHS. The students rolled with us for about 5km after which they pulled off (and a good thing too because our first ‘nature-stop’ of the day (one of many) was scheduled fairly soon afterwards and they wouldn’t have wanted to see that!)

Within the first 30kms or so tragedy struck! We went through a patch of road works on some exposed red clay type dirt, which had just been kindly watered down by the road workers for us, resulting in thick, horrible, red mud - all over us and our newly serviced and cleaned bikes (and my spanky new white shoes!). I must admit to feeling slightly off-balance for the rest of the day due to being covered in muck.

The kms passed quickly at first, but then became increasingly slow due to the rising heat. The Support Crew for the Ride put in a stellar effort to assist with keeping our spirits up by providing mucho supplies of water/gatorade/food at each refuel stop, and also some on-the-go fun with guest appearances from an unnamed streaker as well as Superman!

After stopping at Denmark High School along the way also and then doing a few more kms in the pesky heat, we were finally at Walpole. The massage roster was announced, and I got busy with refueling and cleaning my bike before a quick dip in the pool, and then dinner! Just what I needed to set me straight. Dinner was a fun-filled event where we were introduced to the ‘fine’ system: I was fined for my mad bike-cleaning skillz (they’re all just jealous hey), wearing long socks, a certain embarrassing episode in training where I rode in front of a fast-moving car (fair call that one - I was colossally stupid there) and Brett got fined for my efforts reeling him in when we first started dating - funny!

Stats for the day:
Distance: 123.5km
3:58:26 ride time (ave of 31.08km/hr)
1000m of climbing
Ave HR 140bpm (max 179bpm)

FYI an excellent photo account of our travels is online (better than I could ever attempt using the camera on my iPhone!). See these links: Day zero, Monday Evening and Day one) are up with more to come. Also, we got some local media from GWN!

Tags: albany | cycling | fundraising | prevent youth suicide and depression | ride for youth | walpole

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