This event is now becoming a victim of it's own sucess - apparently in the order of 14,000 riders entered this year. Due to an 'incident' at Waterfall there was congestion so the Police 'throttled' the number of riders starting at Heathcote. I was waiting nearly an hour before the police started letting significant numbers of riders depart. There was still congestion at Waterfall with cycles backed up along the highway waiting to get up onto the railway bridge and McKell Ave.

In Wollongong itself, much of the nice Wollongong cycle way is no longer part of the event route, presumably as the narrow cycle paths are no longer safe with the number of riders in the event - the route turned inland a bit and ran along a number of public roads instead. This had the side effect of taking the so called 56km ride down to 53km :-)