Desert Storm January 17th

Stage 2

Didn’t sleep at all well last night – we were camped on quite a main road with trucks passing by all night – very noisy! Nobody seemed to get much sleep! Anyway I took the opportunity to organize my tent so that was good! We had arranged to leave camp at 8am but turned out that everybody was ready by 7.15 – Scott and I left a few minutes later! We met Peter along the way – he’s the guy who tries to keep the group together – we tried hard to pull him back into the group – I even went back for him at one stage. We were a group of about 20 – all helping each other – and rode together till lunch time.
Lunch was better for me today – cheese and ham sandwich – still very early though – about 9.30 am
We left together as a large group after lunch (although the last group of about 5 that we had picked up just before lunch stayed a little longer)

At about 100 km the main group accelerated and just took off! At speed! I had just finished my turn at the front when this happened and dropped back so it was a real killer for me when they all sped off! I had to really pedal hard to keep up with everyone! Once again they just kept accelerating – once again I decided not to. However we were a real mess for a while – trying to keep our remaining group together and get a rhythym going! I hadn’t been feeling well all morning and was feeling pretty awful by now! Eventually we got everyone working together a lot better – but I did not feel good! It would come in waves and I was not eating enough!! Managed to get into camp about 12.20 – 20 minutes behind the leader – but at least by slowing up I was beginning to feel a bit better! Not as exhausted! I had hoped we would get to a petrol station today to stock up with some snacks but I guess not!

We camped on the side of the road again but it seemed a lot quieter this time! Also went for another swim though it was even further to walk! All good though!

People started to arrive at camp a bit earlier today – a few people had ridden the trucks today and yesterday – which means they have given up EFI status – the wind was a killer! The racers are still all in!

Chilli and mashed potatoes for dinner – Scott and I thought we were going to help out for a while – ended up scrubbing very dirty potatoes for quite a long while!!

Am ready for bed now at 8pm. Very tired and still not feeling great! So – hopefully will sleep better tonight – good night mum!

Post Script:

Went back to the tent – looked at the video I’d been taking – trying to play around with the settings and managed to delete all the video from the first and second days – not good!! Very annoyed at myself!

Anyway – woke in the middle of the night to a howling wind – there was a crazy storm going on outside! My tent seemed fine but there was sand pouring in though the vents – everything inside was covered with sand. I could hear my bike bag flapping away like mad so I got out of my tent to make sure it was secure and tighten it up – all was fine – there was nothing more I could do – so I got back in my tent. I had to turn around away from the sand still pouring in but I then quickly fell fast asleep! In the morning I found out that it was indeed a huge storm, raging for about three hours with tents being torn out of the ground!! I slept through it all!! I was very relieved that I had actually bothered to put my tent pegs in properly the night before though – which I hadn’t the previous night!!