 I'm on my way to the NUSA Tuesday World Champs and I hear there's a special guest coming. So we're going to go straight for the jugular here. We're headed towards the main dropping section of this ride, close to the halfway mark in the famous NUSA Tuesday World Champs. A loop that according to Strava is 24 kilometers in length, although that's the fast section only. Now I should note this ride is famous because NUSA is one of Australia's hotspot tourist destinations, beaches, rivers, national parks. It's got it all and it's only 90 minutes north from Australia's third largest city at 2.5 million population being Brisbane. So we get many big names on our little bit famous World Champs ride here in NUSA and on the screen from left to right you can see the course, cadence, speed, watts as average, three second power, watts as average, 30 second power and the gradient. Once again, like we were back in January 2020, we're joined by one of Australia's most well-known pro cyclists, the little sprinter from Team Lotto Siddhal or now Lotto DSTNY team, Caleb Ewan who has ties to NUSA via his in-laws or so I believe and was here a couple of years ago on the old Saturday fast bunch ride down the coast where Caleb tore my legs off going up a different climb heading into Coulomb. I'll link to that video at the end of this one if you want to check it out. However, this ride which was technically on the 20th of December 2022, I was up for redemption my friends. That's right, my fat ass was not going to get dropped this time around or so I hoped. This climb we're hitting is called the corkscrew and according to Strava it's only 300 meters in length that's 6% gradient and roughly a 30 second all-out effort although whoever created this segment definitely cut off some length either side which as a bloke seems a little bit counter-intuitive so as far as I'm concerned it's more like a one-minute effort which is just long enough to hurt quite a few and to be honest I was a little bit nervous about getting dropped as moments earlier I've been sucked into the excitement of Caleb Ewan being in town trying to keep up with him on the rolling turns which commence on the Nusa Karoi road after exiting the magnificent Gindia Close Road climb which is taken I'd say at a moderate pace as a warm-up into this leg ripping section which is essentially fast turns on mostly flat terrain with a decent little rise at the end before heading into the first landmark being Karoi in fact just coming out of Karoi I fell back into the bunch right towards the end to see how many riders we had left after this first section I know we started the ride with I'd say roughly 35 to 45 riders and counting the remnants here at this early stage Caleb had ripped off at least a third of the bunch's legs there's less than 20 riders left here basically there were snapped off legs all over Nusa Karoi Road on the 20th December 2022 as we get back to the corkscrew here the other bit of self-doubt I personally had as the legs were starting to scream was literally a week ago from this leg tearing moment I look like Tom Hanks from Philadelphia that's right my beautiful nine-year-old Ruby had passed on to me school sores or a staff infection and even my eyes were looking pretty dodgy as I rolled into the start line so being full of antibiotics still looking like Tom and having many leg tears in my legs from the Nusa Karoi road section I wasn't confident at this point to be honest but as you can see Caleb holds a consistent rhythm here last time I was attempting to hold his wheel up a climb the watts were more extreme and typically on this ride people will attack at a thousand watts plus but Caleb is not doing that and I'm bloody glad because I may not have been able to hold his wheel here and thankfully no one was game enough to come around him but what none of us realized was Caleb was biding his time for the real leg tearing moment which is about to commence I'm now fast-forwarding to a nasty section on the Nusa World Champs ride called called the sunny side up on Strava and I PR this segment on this particular day moments prior there were many little lumps on dead roads inflicting more micro tears into everyone's legs and this 2.1 kilometer climb at a average gradient of 2.4 percent is extremely deceiving my friends as you start the climb you will see up ahead like a mirage is going to flatten out but it doesn't it falls flat for a bit rises again and then repeats the same mirage it's arguably the most lethal dropping section on the world champs ride and Caleb was ready to take advantage so I popped out here as you can see and Caleb is off there's a gap quickly developing and no one is game to jump across and you can also see here there's four riders between Caleb and I and I believe one maybe two on my wheel so at this point in time the bunch has been disintegrated down to roughly a quarter of where it started knowing I had the GoPro running and knowing you all saw me get popped last time I made an instinctive call to go for it I had angry Anderson song in the back of my head playing I was going to get across to Caleb's wheel no matter what and we were going to swap 800 watt turns into the finish line with a trail of fire left behind us on the sunrise road but as you can see my five to 600 watt effort quickly became a two to 300 watt effort and I faded so quickly because ultimately I was completely you can see Caleb look around as if to say what's wrong Tom can't keep up again that's right once again Caleb has dropped me off like a sack of crap and I'm now pushing just over 200 watts but feels like 800 so looking through this footage in editing mode Caleb dangled off the front for almost four minutes we caught him just after the final decent drag which often sees a few more get dropped it's called musta musta a solid one minute effort and to be honest I think we only caught Caleb because he was being a nice guy and set up to lead us into the finish line as we headed into the finish Caleb ripped out a few more turns and I thought it would be cool if I could lead him out at the very end here so I put in one big final effort as I thought how cool would it be to see Caleb rip past me to the red letter box which is the official finish line at the top of the hill here but he doesn't it's a local rider that takes the chocolates and speaking to Caleb afterwards but first up I want to put my hand up in the air and say I have awareness things are starting to get a little bit creepy every time Caleb you and is in Nusa town I appear to be following him around with a little camera on a bike unbeknownst so I'm putting my hand in the air and saying yes it is creepy better at the end of the day you wouldn't be clicking on this video if Caleb wasn't involved so we've got to do creepy shit to get big clicks these days of cycling youtubers and I want to thank Caleb because after the ride I did ask him do you mind if I put this ride on YouTube and he said yes so thank you very much Caleb Caleb also said he didn't know where the finish line was otherwise I'm pretty sure he would have ripped past everyone so thanks again to Caleb for letting me film him like a creep and wishing him all the best for the 2023 season don't forget to give the video a like if you've gotten value from it and I'll catch you in the next one sometimes this life can get rough and get knocked down but