Day 2 Up early on day two to beat the toilet rush and have a nice breakfast . Heavy mist made walking to the eating hall a real challenge and I just knew that it will be a long hard day if we started like this .
So there we were about 1400 riders standing in the mist waiting for the person in front to start moving forward as that would be a sign that the race has started . Once we got moving we did our normal trick and kept to the right . With the thick mud and very heavy mist the only thing to really do was to put the hammer down , close your eyes and hope for the best . In our case it worked very well and we did not even have one near miss or incident and made up a lot of places by just going downhill much faster than anybody else . The first climb early in the race also sorted out the unbatched group and spread the field a bit . My partner got a top speed of 73kmph on a dirt road leading up to a tar section , I was going a bit faster than him but since I do not have any funny measuring equipment on my bike I can not claim that I was actually faster . A 5km tar section gave us some time to chat , have a smoke and stretch the legs before we found ourselves back on the dirt and playing in the mud again . About 5 of the river crossing were unridable and we had to carry our bikes through to the other side . At the first water table Mandy was there to support us and dish out some advice . After a quick puff and a doughnut we went in search of the Nando’s water table . I knew they have changed the route to this table but was pleasantly surprised at the Mickey Mouse climb they presented us with to the Nando’s stop . Last year if was a near death experience to get to this table . So we go through the normal routine , first rinse bike , lube chain , get food and drink and jump on bike again . A nice single track on the banks of a “lake” routed us out of the area towards what looked like mountains , but then again in the mist it was difficult to tell . About 1.5km up the road what do we run into ?? A mountain !!! And they did not carve a nice zigzag route to get over it !!! Noooo you must go straight up and over . So out comes granny gear and on goes the race faces . My partner does not use granny gear because he says it makes you lazy !! But he knew by this time that he must do his little sprint up a hill and wait at the top for me as I will get there as well eventually . Unfortunately this hill had the better of me about at the halfway mark after I did a graceful dismount and had to hike-a-bike to the top . Surely it is sadistic to put something like that in a race after you have fed people with as many chicken burgers and coke as they can eat . But we survived that and the rest of the hills that they threw at us and arrived at the next stop in about 6 hours . I am still not sure how much climbing we did , but feel very confident that it was as much if not more as the “original “ route . As with water points I got a normal routine at these over night stops i.e. , shower , eat and drink a few cold ones . The race village was very muddy and a few people slipped and fell (sober) on their way back to the tent . My partner also had a nasty fall and hurt his wrist but we fixed that with duct tape quickly . > > ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ South Africa's premier free email service - www.webmail.co.za ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ For super low premiums, click here http://home.webmail.co.za/dd.pwm -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "DarkAndDirty" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected]. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/darkanddirty?hl=en.
