15
Private audience
She hadn’t expected to pull it off on the first attempt, but as she leaned forward on the bike, lungs bursting, then looked back around at the pathetic distance she’d made it up Melrose Hill before her strength gave out, she knew she had a long way to go if she was even going to compete in the race without embarrassing herself.
From here, just beyond the bulge of the Singing Rock, she wasn’t even high enough to see the beach. The toughest stretch was still above her, with the bulge doing its business like it always had, the switchback so sharp that any momentum built in the run up was stolen away, meaning you had to take on the longer section almost from a standing start. Frustrated, she climbed back onto the pink BMX, pedaled a couple of futile metres, then decided
