Lake Taupo Cycle Challenge
The bike race around Lake Taupo is held in late November each year and is the most popular race in New Zealand. The course is a challenging 160km with plenty of hills and great scenery. Because there are so many riders taking part you will most likely spend a lot of the race riding with a large group so it's a good idea to get used to riding in a group first. These large groups really do make for a fast ride though which is great. Check out the altitude profiles, they give you a really good idea of what the course is like. Take note that the relay and classic course is different from the solo course. The solo course takes a different route and misses a large descent and the climb that follows it.
From Waihaha hill at 56km through to the 74km mark the hills just come one after another. After 84km you'll come to Kuratau hill which rises just over 100m with a gradient of 5%. Hatepe hill is the steepest hill on the course and gains 150m over about 2km to give it a gradient of 7.5%, this one hurts especially seeing as it comes late in the race.
160km is a long way to cycle and will take about 4 hours for the elite riders with others taking over 7 hours. So you'll need plenty of water. Many people just take 2 drink bottles and plan to use the water stops that are located around the course. But they don't hand out bottles you actually have to stop and fill up you bottles, so if you're in a good bunch it is very tempting to just continue riding which makes dehydtration very likely. So you can carry extra water in your pockets, use a seat post drink holder or use a camel bak. For a different take on fuelling strategies take a look at the Cyclo-Fuel program from Graeme Street.
The relay option is very popular and race organisers take care of the rider and bike transport for you which is a huge undertaking for them but makes things much less stressful for the participants and more importantly cuts down the amount of traffic the riders have to contend with.
One of the great things about the size of the event is that most people are aware of it and motorists will avoid getting stuck with 10 thousand cyclists if at all possible, this means there isn't much traffic on the course despite part of it being on the main rd. So if you're keen to take part in New Zealand biggest cycling event you can enter the race on the official website.