Woke up this morning really not having slept very well - I was really slow at getting ready. I had already decided in my head that I would be the last to leave camp today - that means I could chase people all day - and that suits me better. That was my plan but the truth was I was just really slow this morning anyway. Seemed to take me ages to put my tent down, fill my water bottles etc. Everyone else left camp and finally I was ready with all my stuff in the truck - I'd actually had to rush in the end. We'd had semolina for breakfast which although not great is a lot better than Bran Flakes. Got my button ready, checked out and jumped on my bike ready to go - looked down and realized I hadn't set my computer or my SPOT. So had to get off and quickly find my GPS and put the SPOT on. By this time of course I was way behind but that was good as I was ready to chase hard all morning. It was only a 50 k race till lunch time but I had all 65 riders to chase. But it was nice as I slowly made my way through the field and as I started to catch up with some of the faster racers it made me feel really good - much better to catch people!! When I caught up with Scott he told me that Paul and Horst were together up front and then Kendra told me there was about 23 minutes between me and Paul - it was rather fun getting little reports along the way! The road was fairly bad at this stage - familiar corrugated surfaces.
After about 20/30 km we left the road and were basically riding alongside the train tracks. I could see a road off to the right and had not overtaken anyone for quite a while - I calculated there were about 10 riders ahead of me still. They were all fairly quick and had left camp quite a way ahead of me so I probably wouldn't catch them. But I am still riding pretty hard. However I am looking around and getting rather worried as I hadn't seen any flagging and according to the days instructions I should have - also I was expecting the route to be twisting and turning far more but in actual fact we had pretty much followed the railway track - but looking in the dirt I can see earlier tire tracks and so carried on. I did move out to the road for a while but it was really terrible so bumpy. I moved back to the train tracks and carried on riding. I was trying to average about 20 mph and I felt pretty good. But it was a hard ride - bumpy with a headwind. Anyway I made it into lunch with a time of about 2 hours 20 minutes and Paul seemed to think that would be good enough for another stage win. That would be nice - two wins in a row. So I felt really good!
I knew that Kendra had had a hard day - she had been really sick and had just started on some antibiotics and so decided I would wait and ride the afternoon with her if she wanted. I waited a couple of hours for her but she decided to ride in the truck in the end. So I set off in the afternoon riding quite slowly - it was quite tough going - went over a railway bridge and through a village- it got really hot and the road corrugated - but I was overtaking the odd rider. I stopped and helped Pierre when his saddle came off and found a few other riders out on the road. But finally I just couldn't take it any more - it was so hot - I sped up. There was about 40 km left so I wanted to get a move on - I really don't know how those guys do it - I had completely recovered at lunch time but now in the afternoon was dehydrated and drained. There was a welcome grapefruit stop at about 25 km and then the road improved - smooth sand so I was able to speed up again - I just wanted to get in to camp! What a relief when I did!!
At camp we had bought a huge drum of water for 32 Sudanese pounds - which meant we could all have a shower!! Then the locals came along and there was a football match followed by a great meal of pasta and chicken. So all in all a good night!!
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