Saturday, February 3, 2007

Friday, 2nd February 2007

To: Desert Camp #9

Passed NO villages today and were told in advance that we wouldn't. That's o.k., as we reach Khartoum tomorrow and I look forward to that! Since I knew we'd pass nothing (other than desert, which, o.k., is beautiful, but doesn't talk and can easily be seen at a speed of 15 or so miles an hour), I decided to see how hard I could push myself today.

Pushed as hard as I possibly could for the whole entire day. Have never done that before in my entire life. My view of cycling is generally that "it's all about the stops." But so many people on this tour (not all) are so competitive and racing, that the "bug" is starting to seep in. So off I went in the morning. HARD. Tried to have no breaks the whole day, other than 5 minutes at the lunch truck. Left: 7:20 a.m. Arrived in camp: 1:55 p.m. Total time: 6 hrs 35 min. Thought I was going to die. The morning was fine, up to lunch. In fact, it was really neat because, for the first time ever on this trip, I found about 8-10 others of our group when I arrived at lunch! And the tuna fish wasn't all finished! First time that's happened, as I usually arrive alone, or there might be one other slowpoke there, who'se about to leave. The others were surprised to see me. After lunch, things went fine for another 25 km or so. I rode with a fellow cyclist named Yon (from Netherlands) whom I've never ridden with before because he's usually waaayyyy ahead of me. But then ... that was it. Still 35 km from camp and I died. Told Yon to continue on, I had to go slowly. Rode about another 4 km, slllloooowwwwllly. Looked for shade but couldn't find any, so I just pulled over to the side of the road, layed my bike down, and flopped on the sand. Put my helmet over my face to try to keep the sun out. After a few minutes, Patrick (S. Africa), Andrew, and Remy came by. They asked, "You o.k.?" I just put up my thumb and said, "Fine." They asked, "You need water?" I said, "Nope." So they continued on. After some few more minutes, rose myself and headed to camp, as HARD as I could, for another hour and a half or so. Finally, finally, finally, saw the "finish line" flag and camp! At first I thought it was a mirage (honestly, I really did). But when I realized it really was camp, I found the last gumph of energy that I didn't know I had and FLEW into camp! Everybody who was already there (which was most of them, despite the fact that I was riding as hard as I possibly could today) clapped and cheered!

Flew into camp, put the bike down, sat down, thrust off my right shoe, and poured water from my water bottle on it. My foot was burning up. If you're not a cyclist (like me, heh heh), you wouldn't understand burning up feet. Everybody laughed. Later, as we sat around, Andrew told the story of passing me, lying flat-out in the sand with the sun baking on me, after lunch. I laughed and said, "Yeah, and when I said 'fine', that was a big fat lie. But my problem wasn't anything you could do anything about." People laughed. Many of these friends of mine really are into racing and loving it. Several of them, throughout the evening, gave me big pats on the back and asked, "Didn't that feel good?" All I could think was that it was nice to know I could do it if my life ever depends on it, but I will NEVER do that again!

--------------- TODAY ---------------- TOTAL
Cycled --------- 128 km (80 mi) -------- 1,565 km (969 mi)
Sagged --------- 0 ---------------------- 314.5 km (207.5 mi)
Total ----------- 128 km (80 mi) -------- 1,880.5 km (1,176.5 mi)
In Saddle ------ 6 hrs 4 min ------------- 93 hrs 19 min
Ascended ------- 949 feet ---------------- 14,966 feet

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