live-cycle

Stage 4 of Paul and Dennis’s epic adventure sees us leave early, following the lead car and 1000 other riders. For some reason the pace vehicle took a wrong turn with in 1000 metres and couldn’t cross the river he was faced with. He turned round, riders confused and stunned made up their own way across the river, which included trampling down a rather bemused elderly couple who came to see what the fuss was only to be met with a wall of Lycra clad bodies hauling over £3 million worth of carbon and aluminium through their flowers.
My backside, although much perter than before, is so sore I can barely sit down. Dennis is suffering the same way both of us gingerly settle into our rythmn and set about the stage with gusto, 118 km and 10 hours to beat the cut off time.
Gratefully we were able to leave the ropes, ladders, crampons and other climbing gear in the tents. The route wound through the town twice, which is hard as it only has 2 roads before heading out into the country along fast gravel roads. Most of the journey today was much less stressful than previous days although we climbed over 2000 metres most of it was saved for the last 10km, where a devastating series of hills delivered their knockout blows to us. We battled and punished our sore backsides and weary legs over the rocky paths dust billowed out from our wheels casting amazing shadows in the sunlight. As we hit the outskirts of Greyton we managed to put on a parody of a sprint finish, pink faces streaked with dust and our great Britain kit blackened from our trials on the singletrack trails I’m the hills. We beat the cut by a little under an hour and a half.
Showered, massaged and full of pizza we retired early to await Dr Evil’s plans for us.
Still trying to get pix up for you but the Internet cafe pc is not accepting my card reader, however I’m told there is a pic of us crossing the river bed on the cape epic site.
Until tomorrow ttfn

This entry was posted on Wednesday, March 25th, 2009 at 7:29 pm and is filed under Paul. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.