Woke up in the morning to find there was no electricity in the hotel and there I was with all sorts of junk to sort out! Luckily I was awake early and so started to ship my gear out to the locker. saw Scott who thought it was funny I was up so early!! When I went to pay for the room I tried complaining about the lack of water and electricity - basically the answer was "Tough luck!" It was worth a try!! I was all ready to go and felt good. Ate a little breakfast, stuffed my jacket pockets with bananas and we headed off for our 100 km day. 60 km in the morning, 40 in the afternoon - its quite nice to have lunch nearer to the half way mark! Myself, Scott, Tori, Adam and Jorg set off together. Immediately there was a downhill and Jorg and Adam set off quickly and got out front. We had to chase them down when we reached the bottom. Then as a group we cycled through some pretty hectic villages - think the kids were walking to school - performing a funny little dance for us - going wild, screaming, shouting and running afte us!! We managed to get through it. After about 36 km we took a gravel fork in the road - and that was when the fun started. As soon as we hit the gravel Adam took the front and rode hard for about 10 km - we followed. Lost Scott for a while but he soon caught up. When Adam had enough Jorg took the front for the next 10 km or so. It was pretty good - road was corrugated in places. Had my medium tyres on with quite high pressure - was getting bumped around a bit but not too bad, with a bit of headwind towards the end of the morning. We went through a village - there was loads of activity around a dried up river bed - people everywhere - some sort of market going on. There were lots of girls carrying jugs of water and also lots of donkeys pulling water containers. It was quite a scene!
Soon we were back on to pavement - which we weren't expecting for the final 10 km into lunch. There were quite a few people at lunch and we had a quick sandwich. The charity that Liam is supporting was in the area so they had stopped by to say hello so that was all interesting. Jorg and Adam left lunch slightly before us saying that they were just going to roll slowly for a while so Scott and I followed fairly casually. Paul was also ahead so we caught up with him and the three of us rode together. I suddenly looked up and realized Jorg and Adam were getting further and further away so we sped up to try to catch them. Then we got stuck by some cows crossing the road and then had to chase really hard and didnt catch them until about 70 km. Probably about 6 km of 40 km/h chasing !! We did finally catch up and then rode together as a group. At about 80 km it started to get a bit hilly so I sped up one of the hills just to see how the others reacted - I got away but then slowed down again. Adam was strong but Jorg was struggling a little. Scott and Paul were just rolling along so I joined them. We let Adam climb the hill in front. The gravel was supposed to start against the top of the hill. At the top I was out in front - I know the others are not so keen on downhill especially on gravel so I took off full speed. Scott followed - at the right had turn I checked and saw that Scott was just behind me and the others a little further behind us - so I decided to go for it with only about 12 km left for the day. After about 2 km
I checked the distance - only 90 km - still about 10 to go and I was hurting already!! Anyway we carried on down a very sketchy road to suddenly come upon a herd of cows in the road - breaking hard - nearly skidding with the bike bouncing around like crazy - a rough, rough road!! On part of the downs we were traveling in excess of 40 km/h with the bike bouncing all over the place! I did feel fairly confident though. Then Scott shouts " how far left?" 83 km - about 7 km left. He was right behind and shouted " we've lost them - keep going!". There were some good downs and some short steep ups - we were going flat out as fast as possible- then we came around a corner and found the road full of goats - locked up both brakes and with the bike skidding like crazy came to a stop - we then had to meander our way through the goats!! This obviously slowed us up but we soon got going again. I was hurting like crazy now and counting the kms down - finally get to 100km wondering "Where's camp? Where's camp?" Off in the distance at the bottom of the hill we could see some movement and thought that must be the finish. Finally we arrived and let Scott clock in first .
It was a good win for us - Paul turned up a few minutes behind and the Jorg and Adam a few minutes later. So - a really good day!!
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