The Last Two Days

The last two days couldn't have been more different. One, a violent physical effort, seeing us suffer on the hot (and very boring) tarmac. The other, a mtn biker's ballet, finding us delicately dancing up the rocky inclines and ever so carefully descending at breakneck speeds through the sand and scree-covered "trails." I knew that I would hate yesterday's stage (about 70 miles and 34000+ feet of climbing covered in about 5hrs 20min) because it involved a lot of tar sections. Tar is what people here call pavement. Tar is what I call: 1) not mtn biking; 2) utterly dangerous (imagine being wheel to wheel with 200 riders moving along at 25+mph, any one of which could drift into your wheel and cause what would most certainly rival any of the "crash" highlight reels of the Tour de France); 3) mind-numbing boring. I think I have learned more about road racing and riding this week than anything else. Luckily Jim has raced extensively on the road and has been a good teacher by making sure I am protected from the wind and from other riders. Despite Jim's measures, the pace on this day was utterly violent and I spent the majority of the tar sections in my big ring cranking as hard as I could to keep the pace. Eventually I would get spit out the back of the group we were traveling in and Jim and I would be swept up by another group 0f 50 or so riders and the process would repeat itself until we found a suitable group moving at a suitable speed. In our defense, it turns out that the former South African road racing champion is doing this race and probably quite a few of his cohorts. They are used to riding on the road and most likely savored every minute off the dirt. All in all we rode about 15miles on the tar and that was plenty for me. My mind was checked out even before the start of the stage and that added to my suffering. Despite the ride not being my cup of tea, we finished strong and even moved up one place in the Men's category overall.

Today couldn't have been more different. Today was another day for the mtn bikers. In the mornings, the riders are grouped in areas A-E for the start. We recently moved up from Group D to C. Man, what a difference. I liken it to one of my partners who has Elite Platinum status on Delta Airlines. For every mile he flies, he earns 4. So he's assured to get Platinum status again; kind of like the rich getting richer. Not quite fair to the rest of us earning 1 mile for each mile flown. So it is with the starting blocks at the Cape Epic. The difference between the C and D groups was monumental. Each group is comprised of about 120-150 riders. So by moving up one group we effectively have eased our burden in trying to pass all those people during the race. Not to mention the better riders start near the front and it makes for a much more orderly race when technical sections are encountered. For example, on some of the steep climbs--which are certainly rideable--a good rider will ride the climb. However, if one person comes off and starts to walk, it creates a domino effect and eventually the entire field is walking up the climb. Not so today. Everyone we were around was a solid climber (not so much on the descents) and we were able to make some good time on our competitors by not losing momentum. We did encounter our first bit of bad luck today as Jim tore the sidewall of his tire on a rock. Calmly we pulled to the side of the trail (did I mention we were having the most incredible ride and were farther out in front than we had ever been?) and fixed the problem. Luckily Jim and I had been using Accelerade drink packets in our waterbottles and we used the foil wrapper from one of the single serving packets to block the hole in Jim's tire and we motored on. We lost about 5 minutes but probably passed back about 80% of the teams that went by when we were working on his bike. So Accelerade is not only good sports nutrition but it can serve as an emergency tire boot in a pinch (how's that for a product endorsement Steve?). After fixing our flat we made a mad dash to the coast and ended the stage literally on the beach with the Indian ocean crashing right next to the race venue. Behind the race village loomed the enormous lush green mountains that will represent a nice memory of working together, not panicing and having some of the best descending/riding of the trip. It's hard to believe that tomorrow is the final day. I hope our luck holds up for one more nice mtn bike ride.