Have started my antibiotics now and am feeling a lot better. Managed to eat half a bowl of porridge, not feeling great but definitely better and ready to ride! I want to ride with the racers today! We are all ready to clock out but having to wait for Hendry who has a flat. As we are waiting I hear the Brams have decided to pull out of the race itself and so they head off for the day. I see Dennis is ready and he is the one I am keeping an eye on at the moment as my closest competitor (Paul and Horst being too far ahead at this stage to worry about!)
But finally get fed up waiting so Scott and I take off knowing they will only be a couple of minutes behind us and then we will just follow them! After about 5/10 km the rest of the race group turn up without Hendry – so I guess he still hadn’t fixed his flat tyre. We all ride fairly well together – not as much taking turns at the front as before – I for one was not ready to take a turn at the front – quite happy to follow. The stronger riders are all out front. It was definitely a more relaxed pace than earlier – rolling down the hills comfortably!! We arrived at the first decent climb and Paul decided to stand up on his bike and go up the whole hill hard – so I sat on his wheel for the whole time and felt fairly comfortable.. Rode down the other side and looked back – everyone was still there (I had kind of hoped to lose one or two!!) We carried on through the rolling hills and it got really busy. We nearly hit a donkey – I had to slam on my brakes as did everyone behind me! A few dropped off but the majority were all still together in the group.
Then we got to the first real climb of the day – the Brams were with us now and I just sat on various wheels. Different people would go ahead for a while then the rest of us would catch up – we got to the top of the hill and I was following Dennis but struggling like crazy – he would pedal fast for a short while and then slow down, so I would catch him up and then have to brake – it was a bit of a pain!! They have more gears than me (hopefully if I can get my 52 t ring it will help) so I let them pull away from me as we were only a short way from camp and a few minutes isn’t going to matter. This turned out well as they were having to brake a lot as it was so busy through the town. Being further back on my own it was easier for me to wind my way through the traffic. We finally arrived at the hotel campsite at about the same time although I had started two minutes before them – so that wasn’t too bad in the end. A relatively easy short 60 km ride!
The camping was mainly on the hotel roof – on concrete – though there were a few spots on the terrace at the side. The concrete was no good for my tent as it needs to be pegged down and I really didn’t feel like messing around with it. So I got a hotel room with Dennis and then we had the rest of the day off. I was feeling a lot better again and ready to eat some food.
We went off to town and looked around the local market – lots of people following us – it was a pretty cool market though – we had been told you could buy just about anything here (not quite true!) – the locals tried to sell us T shirts – all the common makes – Nike etc. We finally went back to a place called STARBACKS and ordered a pizza – waited for an hour for it to arrive and when it did turn up it was awful – my stomach was definitely not up to that!
We went back to the hotel where I dosed myself up on antibiotics and spent some time on the internet emailing mum about a package she is going to send over for us – hopefully to the DHL office in Addis Ababa. I then managed to have asleep for a while. There was a party that evening so I forced myself to wake up and go along. Felt a bit rough at first but then had a couple of beers and felt a lot better!! Sat with Scott and watched the festivities as I didn’t really feel like dancing myself – but a lot of people got dressed up and did join in the dancing. It was a really fun night.
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