It’s a little late to be filling you in on the what happened yesterday on Stage 1 as I am sitting here at at the Saronsberg wine farm near Tulbagh, after having survived Stage 2! So perhaps it’s worth making this a double and my conscience will be clear. In that regard anyway!

The event puts riders up in tents. You don’t have to share (unless you want to, but that’s a different issue), but even for a single rider the tent is a little cramped. Inside is space for one foam mattress on one side and your kit bag. These are provided and are the only ones that will be transported between the villages. Typically the large duffle bag opens from the top so you can squash all your stuff in and retrieve it the sam way. This year there are problem. The race bags are awesome – wheelie jobs with extendable handles so no lugging them around form truck to tent on spent legs. And they have a number of compartments so you don’t have to strew everything around the tent each time you are looking for any item. Which is what basically happens no matter what you are looking for. Torch – unpack, repack. Wet wipes – unpack, repack. Book? Unpack repack. Beanie? You get the idea. So compartments are a good thing, right? Well, in reality to access the compartments you have to slice your bag open (the zipper is useful for this) and spatchcock the bag. Now it is lying across your mattress too. Which is where you were sitting a moment ago. So, now your butt is hanging out the opening as you scrabble around in compartment after compartment, unpacking the lot to find your torch. Good for airline travel, and/or hotel stays but not to clever in a 2sqm tent!

The race village at Citrusdal

And there are many other reasons to give the tents a miss. They are hot in the afternoon to rest in. They are noisy at night to go to sleep in and there is always, always some hearty individual who insists on getting up at 4.30am and jabbering loudly to his mate. What do they think?!? Everyone else is deaf? Selfish gits!

The tent village makes for scenic pics, but is not that comfortable.

Which is one of the many reasons I am soooo glad to be in a mobile home rather than a tent. Not only this, but we also have an angel of mercy looking after us. My physio, Sarah Walker is our camp master, driver, shopper, laundress, supporter and organiser. And she patches our bodies up after each stage. We break ’em, she mends ’em. Sarah has been really amazing and I cannot begin to describe the difference it makes to be looked after like this.

The team on the start line

And so to the riding itself. Rather than a blow by blow of this climb, that descent, the sun, the wind blah blah, I thought I would mention a few incidents that stood out for me.

Stage 1 was a loop around Citrusdal. Fortuntely it had been shortened to “only” 96km as the last climb had been ravaged by a recent bush fire in the area. On the first rough rocky descent lost my rear water bottle. Pretty much a calamity. Fortunately Jayson was able to stop and retrieve it, stuffing it into a his jersey pocket. The twist was that not much further down, Jayson noticed his front water bottle cage had come adrift and was hanging on by just one bolt. So out came his bottle and was stuffed into the other side jersey pocket. If you knew how small these pockets are, you would know that it was quite a feat to complete the descent and not lose the bottles yet again!

Around and about Citrusdal

The big story of the day was the sand. Many of the riders were complaining bitterly about the amount of walking (they always do!) due to congestion and sand. Riding through sand is quite tricky. On a downhill it can be managed at speed – Jayson commented that once when he looked down we were doing close on 60kph through one particular patch. The trick is to float the front wheel with your weight rearwards, let the wheel find it’s own line and, duh, keep you balance as it does so. If necessary pedal like crazy to keep up the momentum. If you need to scrub some speed, do not use the front brake at all s it digs the wheel in and you are bound to go off line and brought to a halt. Not all riders manage this so, apart from hiking all the uphill sand and much of the flat sand, they even had to hike-a-bike through the downhill stretches. The route designer, Dr Evil tweeted “This ain’t the Cape Easy!”. he also mentioned that after 6h15 minutes with only 80 of the 600 team is he had done enough damage for the day and was going to ground lest he be found by some of the less than happy riders.

One unfortunate professional, Robert Mennen, hit a small buck that was crossing the track and broke his collarbone in the resulting crash. The buck was fine. There were other collarbones in need of repair apart from Roberts. 80 riders did not complete the stage or were outside the 9 hour cutoff! If a Pro rider finishes but loses his partner, he then has to wear an “Outcast” jersey which signals that he may not interfere with the race result by assisting any other team by, for example, sharing his spares or, even, donating a wheel to a team still in contention. The Outcast jersey – how appropriate where just being a survivor is a challenge!

Jayson and I finished the stage in about 6h06m and were 73rd overall. Another surprising result. Buut we’ll take it.

Stage 2 took us from Citrusdal though to the Saronsberg wine farm near Tulbagh. This required roughly 147km so some of it had to be on gravel roads. Quite a bit I guess. But not at all easy! Leaving the village we headed straight up the 18km Middleberg pass climbing 900m in 1h10m of grinding upwards. But there were some interesting sections. About 5km of single track in the Cederberg area and an really challenging 8km technical single track descent down 900m of rocky nightmares (big rocks, sharp rocks, round boulders, loose boulders and stones), familiar loose sand a scary tracks with the lower slope exposed by a recent bush fire. By far the most demanding technical section I have ridden.

Up the Middleberg pass

Jose Hermida (yes a pro!) through the Cederberg single-track with it’s characteristic rock formations

Local supporters

And that was about it for interesting bits on stage 2!

A tough day at the office. We dropped down a few places to finish 80th on the day in about 7h07m. But we maintained on to 73rd in the overall GC riding a total if 14h25m for the 265km covered so far. We really have to slow dow tomorrow!

Stage 2 done and dusty (sic).