live-cycle

After such an awful day yesterday, things could only get better today, and they did. Two crashes and two punctures were still preferable to yesterday’s nightmare, and the only thing that might have dented our high hopes was the thought of being eliminated by missing the cutoff.
But let’s start from the bottom up. Quite literally, I mean.
I started the day by attending the bum clinic. I joined the queue of men and women who were finding it difficult to get back in the saddle day after day. When my turn arrived, I was pleased that my medic was not the pretty young thing who had fixed my broken nail yesterday (yes, you do get a manicure thrown in) but a burly fellow who goes by the name of Randall. While bending in front of him, he told me that I should have gone there sooner. Then, as he put the strapping on, he told me rather subtly to “just pull your nuts forward”. He didn’t ask me to cough, but then added: “Next time you ride the Epic, make sure that you shave your bum.” Well, I can now promise you all that that will never be necessary. (By the by, I have subsequently found out that Paul would be quite welcome to Randall’s ministrations.)
Anyhow, then on to the ride. It started with a fast road section, then a climb up to the Steenbras Dam. Fast road section, I say, but I was rather dragging along at the back of the bunch. But we made it to the top, then started “the steep and technical descent at Wolfkloof”. Cleary it was beyond my technical ability, because I decided to ride a section that most people were pushing down, and had a rapid coming together with the trail. My left knee and elbow were grazed, and I narrowly avoided a kissing relationship with a rather ugly boulder, but somehow it turned out that I wasn’t its type.
Back on the bike after some TLC from Paul, and we continued on our way. Not long after that I provided Paul with an encore. He had stop to take a picture of me just before then, but fortunately I waited until he had put the camera away before providing the theatrics. Once again, Paul was picking me up and pouring water on my cuts and grazes, and we pressed on.
At only 86km it was a relatively short day, but with 1560 metres of climbing (which, in sterling, is a mile straight up) it was never going to be easy. Still, most of the ups were rideable, and many of the downhills were super. The first puncture happened about half way on a small river crossing – the slime in the back wheel just would not solidify, so we put in a tube. The second flat was the same wheel, crossing some roots during a wonderful section of singletrack through the Lebanon forestry reserve. The whole route has been littered with broken chains and discarded inner tubes lying in the dust along the track like shed snakeskins. In fact, that is almost the only wildlife we have seen, apart from the bucking wildebeest next to the track yesterday.
Soon after that came the moment of panic. Paul had been a picture of patience all day, waiting for me, encouraging me, picking me up when I was down (physically and mentally). And with about 13km to go, I was actually beginning to enjoy the ride, when suddenly he said we were going to miss the cutoff. “We’ve got to do 13km in 33 minutes,” he announced out of the blue. I knew that the organisers had imposed an earlier cutoff today, but it seems that Paul failed mental arithmetic at primary school. We asked Mr and Mrs Fifteenth Anniversary from Spain how long we had, and it turned out that it was a lot more than 33 minutes. So we pressed on, enjoying the last of the singletrack into Oak Valley, and finished with an hour and a half to spare, and feeling almost human again.
So, one more day to go. Thank goodness, and thank Paul for picking me up.

This entry was posted on Friday, March 27th, 2009 at 3:46 pm and is filed under Dennis. 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.