Today's stage was a bit of mountain biking nirvana ! 127km's with 1900 meters of climbing. We dropped off the escarpment into a stunning singletrack for a few km's before climbing back up & dropping down again the other side.
The Spionkop traverse was amazing with awesome singletrack down the other side. Equally awesome was the singletrack along the Tugela river - a bit like van Gaalens river section only a 100 times better.
Smooth flowing singletrack through tree lined river banks into an awesome water station made all the pain worthwhile. Puffadder pass was tough & hot especially at the end of the day, but the descent was worth it !
In general the descents today rivaled anything I've experienced before mostly because they were singletrack, technical & steep. It was fantastic to fly down the side of a mountain on twisting goat & Jeep tracks @ over 45 km/h - a heady combination for an adrenaline junky !
The last water station was at 100 km's and had cuppachino's, cool drinks, fruit cake, savoury pastries, boerie rolls and and and !!! Chris & I are positively stuffed.
Lunch (15:30 for us) at the race village was stirfry cooked up for you by farmers manning a gazillion skottle braais. Choose your ingredients & sauce and they cooked it, after which rice could be added. Several servings each later and dinner was a no go. It was just too much.
An amazing day's riding. Our muscles are properly sore as are our butts ! Chris & I had a good ride and are 152/400. We came in in a respectable 08h30min's.
Race to Rhodes ‘24 - Last Day
5 months ago
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