100 Miles in a Morning - April 23

Went to bed last night knowing that I had a flat on my bike – but couldn’t get into my locker as driver Steve had already gone to bed and we are not allowed access then! So this morning I had to repair it – had to dig through my bags to find my inner tube and then after I had fixed it there was a line for the pump – I had other things to do but every time I returned to check the line there seemed to be more people in it! Then some people were talking about breakfast in the hotel before we set off – sounded like a good idea! After about ½ hour I finally pumped up my tyre and everybody seemed to have left. But I ran over to breakfast and there were still people there. I had a good breakfast by pretending I was in the room with Bastiaan!! Then I headed out with the 2 Brams, Bastiaan and a few other guys. Bastiaan and I were ready first so we set off slowly down the road and Bastiaan stopped off at some shops looking for sunglasses to buy. Then the 2 Brams turned up and the four of us decided to set off together as we were ready! We slowly got faster and faster with the help of a tailwind. It was a smooth, flat, straight road with little change of scenery. We soon got going – 30, 35, 40, 45 and even 48 kmph at times! We were just flying! I felt pretty good even though I hadn’t expected to be going so fast today. My heart rate got up to 170 a few times when it was my turn out front. The 4 of us were just whizzing along and working really well together. At lunch our average speed was 35kmph and that included the slow 9 km start and Bastiaan browsing the shops!! It was more like an average of 42/43 kmph at least!! It was so exciting though – really cool! There were a lot of riders at lunch. We rode fairly quickly out of lunch to a coke stop – again there were a lot of riders in there. Bram however was not feeling too well and so didn’t want to ride fast any more – so Bastiaan and I set off together and soon wound it up to about 42/43 kmph again. I was hurting but I really wanted to push myself and see how much I could take. I also knew that I only had to shout “Slow down” at any time and Bastiaan would immediately do so! So that was nice. After 20 km riding fast we then slowed down and chatted more for the next 10k. But we then decided to sprint the last 20 km as fast as we could – though we no longer had the morning’s tailwind to help. So again we arrived at camp pretty early had another great day. 100 miles in less than 5 hours – in fact about 4 hours 20 minutes of riding time – pretty amazing!!