Cycling success a surprise to Lyttle

Sue Lyttle was not banking on being amongst the major placegetters in the inaugural Lion Foundation Cycle Challenge, which required the 80 participants to cover the 800kms between Wellington and Auckland in seven days.
Lyttle, 52, from Carterton had the prime objective of finishing the event in one piece so was as surprised as anyone by her winning of the women's 45yrs and over age group by a massive 2hrs 17mins and placing second women overall behind Aucklander Rachel Larner.
"Honestly, if anyone had suggested I was going to do that well before it started & well, I wouldn't have had a bar of it," Lyttle said yesterday. "When it's something new like this you can't make predictions anyway, you can't be sure what's going to happen."
For Lyttle it was her first serious endurance cycle race since winning her age group at the national road championships in 2005 and she admits her entry was prompted in large part by a cheeky comment from son Scott, now riding successfully on the professional circuit.
"He (Scott) said something about me growing old and it was about time I sat down and did some knitting," Lyttle laughingly recalled. "That got me going."
Getting going for Lyttle in preparation for the Wellington -Auckland race meant three months of hard training, sometimes twice daily.
"It got to the point where covering 500kms a week was a breeze, I actually started to enjoy it," she said.
Lyttle is the first to concede, however, that the race itself was very definitely no breeze.
It was divided into 13 stages and meant riding between 120 and 130kms per day and, all told, she was on the bike for a 24hrs 23mins.
Head of the organising committee was former champion road race Stephen Cox and having relished hill climbs himself he made certain that many of the stages included at least one decent climb.
"Everywhere we went there seemed to be hills & we certainly didn't just keep to the flat", Lyttle said. "He (Cox) told us it would be testing, and no one would argue with that."
Lyttle's race plan was relatively simple, the main thrust of it being to ride at a pace which would not sap her energy reserves. "Some riders were inclined to rip into it early on and they paid the price, when you are travelling that far in such a short space of time you can't afford to do that," she said.
Ensuring that she ate well without going "over the top" and had sufficient rest in between stages were also an important part of the Lyttle strategy although she says there were a couple of "dark days" when exhaustion threatened to get the better of her. "I wasn't very good company then," she quipped.
Pleased as she was with her results the chances of Sue Lyttle entering another Wellington to Auckland road race are slim.
"I can't see me doing it again, I went into it with the idea of it being a oncer and I can't see anything changing in that regard", she said. "Maybe I might take up knitting!"