Every year in late September / early October for the last 19 years the Simpson Desert has issued a challenge to cyclists from all over Australia and afar. A challenge to cross it from one side to the other – not a mere 24 hour challenge, not a challenge of speed or steep descents; not of challenge of fear terror; not a challenge of rock jumping and ledges but a challenge of endurance and determination. Determination against an insidious foe - a foe who’s moves and stratagems are in no way predictable, and that change from year to year and frequently, from day to day.
The Simpson Desert Cycle Challenge is a 5-day enduro event - an event of extremes – like extreme remoteness. The Challenge is not a case of just getting a flight to the nearest city and then a limo to the start line. There are NO plush hotel rooms – zero; zilch; nada; none – not even caravan park cabins luxury. No bellboy, no concierge, no bed. No air-conditioning, no electric blanket, no room service – actually no room.
The Challenge start line is at least 2 days travel from any Australian Capital City – perhaps more. Those 2 days are just the start because there is a lot of preparation required – you need support crew, a well-prepared 4WD vehicle, camping arrangements, food and water – to name just a few.
While you’re on the Challenge you need to be almost entirely self-sufficient and you need to be ready for sleeping out – be it tent, bed-roll or swag.
Getting to the start line is part of The Challenge. This year, Team Tasmania had a problem which meant their support crew was destroyed just a few days prior to departure. Amazingly they managed to enlist Don and [name] in a borrowed Hilux Dual-cab Ute and got there – just. Their misdemeanour led to a fine at the Pre-race Meeting because they were late.
Team Bumbu Bali – Rider Heinz von Holzen and his support crew – Mike Fewster and Suzette Watkins, had a power steering failure on the way, which meant that they had to backtrack a few hundred km down the Oodnadatta Track to Coober Pedy and wait for business to open on Monday morning for a repair. The Challenge means preparation – not that you can ever be fully prepared. You never know what The Simpson Desert will throw at you.
It is not enough to play weekend warrior, and get your riding strength and endurance up either – even though the race has been run for 19 years, no one has ever ridden the course! As Gaye Couchman – three times women’s winner says, “When you're riding the race [all you care about is] getting to the finish by whatever human-powered means possible ... pushing bike, carrying bike, crawling with bike”. Significant cross-training is necessary because you’ll be climbing sand dunes that defy the strongest riders. You’ll be carrying your bike too, through those really deep sandy sections.
Don’t think either, that your butt will get away with it lightly. When you can get on the pedals and power away, you’ll be challenged to find a rideable track through the corrugations that minimises their bone-jolting impact. After all, most of the course is two wheel tracks across the desert from one sand dune to the next (where it disappears), and you’ll want to decide whether the left wheel rut, the right wheel rut, in the middle or off-track presents the most comfortable and fastest route for you.
Having made the best decisions, you still never know what The Simpson Desert will throw at you. Firm-looking sand tends not be firm at all – often it becomes so soft that your front tyre gets caught unexpectedly, and despite all the strength of your arms applied to the task, your wheel veers left, your bike snakes and pulls up rapidly and before you know it, your aching butt is arching it’s way over the handle-bars and landing with a thud in the burrs and fine prickles alongside the track. Who said the sand is soft? And you knew it was hot before you did it didn’t you!
If your butt could talk it would scream – the ordeal of the butt is not something you can prepare for. Take 2006 Challenge Winner, Ed Bourke - he may well have had an advantage in the butt department. After all he had just ridden his bike from London to Melbourne, with his wife. For all that, Ed – a young 50-odd who some would describe as an ox, is really a dinosaur – particularly, a megasaurarse.
The butt of many jokes, perhaps, but the legends of the race – riders and officials alike, are known for their butt-defying or is it butt-destroying acts. Seven-time rider and now Race Director, Richard “Bean” Ware, affectionately named for his likeness to the Rowan Atkinson character, has a set of his riding shorts – surf-shorts, I might add, with a graphic butt stain. Thankfully they are behind glass and framed, hanging on the wall in the Birdsville Pub – the famous location of the finishing line of the Challenge.
Legendary Race Medic, Doctor Ian “Bum Doctor” Bowmaker and colleague Dr. John Hill (father of the current Medical Director) are renowned for their creation of bum-cream – a private concoction of sheep-fat and a topical anaesthetic, affectionately known as “Sheep Dip”, and lavishly applied by the medics or the riders themselves, before, during and after almost every stage of the 9-stage event. 1989 winner, and fourth-time rider Ross Martin doesn’t think his butt was a problem, but then at 53 and having ridden across most of Australia with his American wife Toy, and various of his other eclectic friends, he is just as likely to have forgotten or to have a hide so poorly treated that his has immunity to butt pain.
Of course, in the Desert, you can quickly become the butt of jokes - the sight of riders and officials alike wandering off into the desert becomes common place – The Simpson Desert does not provide Tour de France domestiques Only one thing is considered more important than caring for your butt. That is managing hydration. Every participant – be they rider, official or support crew is at great risk of dehydration in the extreme dry conditions where the sand is whipped up by the dry winds, and the sun burns off the first hint of moisture from skin, eyes, nose and mouth.
The sand is driven into every crack adding chaffing to the dryness and before you know it you are looking twenty years older and feeling drier than camel dung.
If that were all … but it’s not – in The Simpson Desert dehydration becomes a sinister opponent, attacking you even while you sleep and again when you wander into the desert to relieve yourself. Then, even before you feel thirsty, it hits your energy and competence – mental and physical. Your reaction time increases, your coordination decreases and you become more and more irrational – at least you have a decent excuse, although not good enough to excuse you from having to pay a fine. In no time it hits your liver function and gastritis and severe headache set in.
This year Rider Richard Bourne was hit so badly that by the morning of Day 2 he was vomiting, and was on his fourth litre of saline drip when evacuated to Birdsville as a precaution against a relapse and increased criticality where help was hundreds of desert kilometres away.
Logistically, the event includes water stops manned every 15 or 20 kilometres, and riders are assessed using the “Clear and Copious” standard, their camelbaks refilled and full bidons installed on their bikes.
“Clear and copious” is the message from the substantial medical crew that attends The Simpson Desert Cycle Challenge, as they emphasise the reality that as much as 2 litres per hour are required by each rider and the early warning sign of hydration is the darkening of the urine as the liver and kidneys start to suffer.
At the end of each stage they are weighed as weight-loss is the undeniable evidence of dehydration and reductions of more than 10% get you severe reprimand, threat of disqualification and even closer monitoring on following stages. The medics are so concerned that they refuse to let a smile break their lips until the post-Challenge beers are being thrown back in the Birdsville Pub, and even there, they are preaching the virtues of hydration on the long road home.
Simpson Desert Cycle Challenge veteran Ross Martin openly acknowledges that he came perilously close to serious damage, even in 1989 when he won the race. On Stage 2 – the afternoon of the first day, he recounts having fallen off the bike, and having enjoyed the experience of watching himself riding past from the vantage point of a hallucinatory trance at his track-side landing spot – despite which he managed to get up and complete the stage some how. He also tells of the challenge of finding a vein in his hands – they had all collapsed, and of how great the cool pulsing hydration of the drip administered by the medics felt.
As they say, the desert is dryer than an Old Afghan Camel Trader’s fart.
Tackle the big issues of managing megasaurarse and hydration, and the little issues are then worthy of mention. Little – like the rumoured 300 odd – some say 700, sand dunes (no don’t start to count them) – and the further East you go, the higher they get. Now, this has one benefit – you can at last get up to 40 or 50 km/h and enjoy the breeze on your face on your way down the other side, but generally this is at the great expense of the 3 metre high soft tops adorning many of them – soft tops with a vertical face to climb, and the lack of any track to follow. The tracks of the vehicle or rider have since been covered over by the rapidly moving sand.
Megasaurause is a scientific name coined by workmates 2001 rider Declan Brazil. Their story can be found on the SDCC Website.
Just when there is a break from the sand dunes, there is the talcum-powder like dust that the worn-down surface of the clay-pans leaves, and these flatish clay pans a few kilometres wide often glare with the beating-down sun.
Then there is the salty dust and crusty surface of the dried up salt lakes, or the corrugations [6316, 8775] that afflict the track in between the sand dunes. Your options are to sit it out on megasaurarse or stand up like a man (or woman) and fight. The fighters are not hard to identify.
One of them – second place-getter and three-time finisher Heinz von Holzen – a renowned chef and food educator from Bali, ran his bike 4 km to the first water stop on Stage 2 after a nut fell off his crank on the track – unfortunately he didn’t have a spare nut, and despite all sorts of potential alternatives, none was adequate to do the job, and so a bike was cobbled together from a spare bike and spare parts. Heinz’s cultural diversity – a resident of Bali, and his dual Swiss/Australian citizenship made for a colourful contribution as he matched his national colours in the outfit chosen each day with the zinc cream he wore. Preparation above and beyond. All there was to see of Heinz’s culinary capabilities however, extended chiefly to mixing the raw egg with the baked beans and other Challenge Specials, and reading his Balinese cooking recipe books and dreaming of the luxury.
Another of them – second time finisher, André Gavlik of Team Tasmania, incredibly broke his crank – have you ever heard of that? André called on the esprit de corps that is evident throughout the Simpson Desert Cycle Challenge, and with help from other riders and their support crews – and one of the photographers, managed to put together a replacement setup by turning the other broken bikes into something resembling Simpson Desert Cycle Wrecker’s yard.
This is no road-rider’s paradise where your bike is repaired under you while you still sit on it. No spare wheel replacement on-demand by a bike technician. That is something you have to know.
The desert is no comfortable place to find out what you don’t know either. Remarkable first timer Michael Soszynski spent the first three days battling his desert demons.
Day 1 was terrible, and the suffering was evident, although the results were credible.
Day 2 he found plumbed the depths of the capacity he had within. He found the highs and the lows. He saw the prospect of being a stage winner come into view … and then disappear only to be swept on the afternoon stage – you have got to believe that feels somewhat ignominious – no-one sets out to let the Noel “The Bastard Sweep” catch up to them with his constant 12 km/hour, and pull them from the stage. For sure, he found out about hydration. For sur,e he found out just where to leave your out and out competitive spirit when it comes to racing the field.
Day 3 he was at the back of the field in the morning being pulled along by “Bean Attitude Award” winner Mark Polley, only to be pulled by the medics from the afternoon.
Day 4, at the head of the field he suffered a puncture. He learnt that he didn’t know how to mend it, and he learnt and kicked himself for not learning beforehand. After all, the Adelaide-based member of Team Tasmania is a soccer player, had taken up cycling only a few weeks before. In disgust he kicked around the dirt and rocks of the endless gibber plan known as Goyder’s Lagoon while others tried to encourage him and showed him how it was done.
Head down he pushed away across the plain, dejected and weary, only to sit up; get up and power away on hearing the news that Ed had mistaken the official sign and taken a wrong turn, and he was now within sight – well nothing is ever in sight except more sand dunes, but getting close to taking the morning stage as he finally did 15 minutes ahead of his pursuers.
There is no doubt the pelaton is a diverse group. There was only one woman in the field this year – a diminutive but incredibly gritty and inspiring rider Terry Moore, who not only managed to complete the race – all 581 km of it, but also did it in style and with an inimitable smile every time anyone looked at her. A fleeting grimace ] at the end of the race perhaps told the real story of the constitution and courage of this young woman. The hugs she shared with her support team and 1997 Over 50 Female Winner Gill Plastow, and close friend and recovered rider Richard Bourne indicate the sort of head challenge the desert puts up, and the importance and value of the support crews and officials in maintaining some sort of mental equilibrium. Teachers, doctors, chief executives, computer geeks - mostly with age and experience rather than youthful energy. Leon “Dr. Mal” Malzinskas presently working on a post-doctorate some way or other focusing on extreme sports
–was not only racing, but was also working, collecting statistics for his research from the body weight and hydration inputs and outputs. Renowned for his different outfits showing “his” muscles, his bones and his guts.
There is though a serious side to the event that cannot be overstated. The event is a fundraiser for the Paraplegic Benefits Fund and this perversely leads to a lot of fun. At every opportunity the officials and the entire group are looking for opportunities to increase the amount of money being raised by fining participants for mis-demeanours – minor and major.
- Team Tasmania for arriving late.
- Brian, for running out of oil in his car – he hadn’t checked the oil since leaving Melbourne.
- Andre, for losing his phone on the way to the desert and for drinking all the beer for the whole trip before reaching Oodnadatta!
- Keith, for driving off with the rider’s jellybeans on the bonnet
- Dr Greg, for promoting sheep dip as nipple cream to try and get some takers.
- How many men does it really take to set up an ironing board??? Bean, Dr Hugh, Noel, Ian and others for demonstrating it.
- Bean,for inappropriate behaviour at water stop one
- Brian, for littering the desert with his aerial which fell off his car
- Keith, for trying to sacrifice his car in flames to the gods of the desert - also earned him Goose of the Day as well
- Keith, for treating the goose in an innapropriate manner
- The Sri Lankens, for having to get girls to help them change a tyre
- Gill, for hurting the desert wildlife, eating flies on her toast.
- Michael, for bringing 42 rolls of toilet paper to the desert. environmentally unsound!
- Dr Mal, for dressing as a superhero, and not wearing his undies on the outside.
- Bean, for getting very very stuck on a dune, in a Mercedes of all things. This involved a lot of digging, earth moving etc to break free, etc, and
- Water Stop 3, the 10-pound poms for watching from the next dune and not offering assistance but laughing.
- Kumaren the Sri Lanken for asking the most questions ever prior to the race in the history of the race
- Andrew and Mark, for showing off with the “biggest lens"
- Dr Greg, for wearing his windshield’s reflector shield as a heat reflecting garment to protect his manly bits from the desert sun
Do you have what it takes to face down the Challenge of the Simpson Desert?
Whether you think you might, or you know you don’t, for MTB and Touring Cyclists, the Simpson Desert Cycle Challenge is there to be faced, and whether you ride it, walk it, get swept or just support another rider, it is a lot of fun, and a world class event – a challenge that any finisher can proudly say they have beaten.
The website for Simpson Desert Cycle Challenge is www.sdcc.org.au. In 2007 it will be held from 1st October to 6th October – the course is weather dependent and subject to alteration.
Andrew Weller is the founder of Vivid Adventures, a photography tour business that runs an Extreme Sports Photography Tour as official photographers of the SDCC.
