When race director Richard Gallimore gives a safety induction, he ain’t kidding around.
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Gallimore said the theme of this year’s ride was “blood red” with warning tape marking areas where riders had serious accidents in previous years.
A former Merimbula man acknowledged that he had previously been one of the casualties to which Gallimore mentioned after breaking a collar bone during the ride.
However, he was back to ride in his 10th and said he had driven 10 hours from Taree just to take part and was driving home again on Sunday.
Luckily, there were no major incidents in this year’s ride which attracted a record crowd to be dubbed the biggest yet.
Officials entries tallied more than 140 on Saturday for the 30k stint from the Tarraganda fire shed of Dr George into the north side of Tathra.
During the briefing the crowd was made to declare “this is not a race” before setting off.
A few eager riders still like to give the event their best and made the 30k trek in about 50 minutes.
Meanwhile the majority of riders finished in about an hour and a half.
A good number of the field got near 40kph on the tarmac, while the front-runners averaged almost 40kph across the entire ride.
No official times are recorded and no prizes are awarded for the first-finishers.
But, organisers do like to offer a couple of prizes that are drawn at random and Kalaru rider David Fantham was the lucky winner of a brand new mountain bike from Tathra Beach and Bike.