"What do you think you're doing?"
So I battled the incline and five minutes later perched upon the grassed bank near the gardens off Spencer Rd.
And so it came to pass that the police escort sirens and whistles began getting louder and the first of the riders appeared.
All I could do was watch and wonder, and then looked at my knees and murmured "You think you've been doing it tough?"
These men leading the pack were as fresh of face as anyone in the spectating spread.
If anything, they actually looked more comfortable.
I came across a chap I knew and he said what I was about to say first.
"These guys aren't real," he sort of whispered with a bemused shake of the head.
"They're gunna come up here seven more times and they're probably going to get faster ... they can't be human."
I took some notes, got to my feet, and embarked on the downward hill journey back to the car, and a couple of hours later left the office again for my third wander up to the finish line area to get some glimpses of the pace they produced on the parade.
Being of the "bit of exercise is good for you" fraternity I veered away from the lift back at the workface and took the stairs.
By the time I got to the point where there were eight more steps to complete I felt like I had reached the highest base camp before the final push to the summit of Everest.
The following day, Mr Leftknee and his brother who leans toward the right let me know I'd done several kilometres, including some unfamiliar uphill stepping.
So out came the joint pills and all was fine and dandy, and I wondered how the guys who aren't real were feeling.
Although I knew how they'd be feeling.
They'd have been fine. The first three chaps across the line looked as if they'd just ridden down to the shop and back for a loaf of bread ... not the equivalent of from here to Wairakei.
They barely raised a sweat, and they wandered about smiling and chatting without great loss of breath and with limbs and joints still clearly like fine fluid and fully charged up.
To say I felt my age would be an understatement, although I couldn't really feel my knees.
Even in my fittest years of club rugby and hard long-hour labouring I doubt I could have got anywhere near these blokes.
If they were to have partaken in a pedal journey to Wairakei then by the time they were parking up there for a latte I'd have been sobbing to a halt at Te Pohue.
They are made of remarkable stuff these cycling miracles.
They are, of course, professionals and this is their gig. They train, they embark on bewildering diets and they train. And then on the seventh day ... they train.
At my time of life and with my knees I'd prefer to take the train.
I wonder how the knees of these champion cyclists will be in 30 years as by then, I daresay, they would have ridden, at pace and power, the equivalent of one lap of the planet.
They will probably be ... in superb shape.
Along with everyone else who saw them surging up the hill and later barrelling down at frightening velocity I was spellbound, and I could quite easily get hooked on watching this human-propulsion version.
It is another world, inhabited by people who I suspect are from another world. As the bloke I chatted with up there on Spencer Rd said, "They can't be human".
- Roger Moroney is an award-winning journalist for Hawke's Bay Today and observer of the slightly off-centre.
