Training Log Archive: Stijn

Easing back into it - just need to remind my legs that they have a 53k with 4000m climb in the Dolomites next Saturday!

TE 3 http://www.movescount.com/moves/move220839479

C • From Kettle into Fire (fire to fire?) 3

We had heard rumours of a straightforward final bike leg and all I can say to that is #fakenews! Thick mist had descended over the farm when we left transition and it was very tricky finding our way out to the main road via a confusion of sandy tracks and ploughed fields. Then there was an incredibly steep pass followed by a 10km section of mostly unrideable sand. Stephan always has the last laugh ;)

Sunrise was again spectacular over the low-lying mist as we were climbing up and over the Gifberg Pass. On the steep descent of the pass, we had one final obstacle to deal with as John's tyre developed a leak at the valve which the slime wasn't sealing. We eventually put a 29er tube in his 26-inch wheel which sorted out the problem, but then couldn't get the rear wheel back on as the thread on his rear axle had stripped, meaning the skewer wouldn't lock the wheel into place. Kev pulled some bush mechanics here and cut some new thread, just managing to get the wheel to fit in on the now-shorter axle.

Anyway! Last 20km of bloody-corrugated gravel roads and we were rolling through Vanrhynsdorp to the finish line. Seth thought there would be nothing much waiting for us but since we were the final full course finishers, just about everybody had turned up to welcome us home. It was insane! And massively overwhelming!

It was such an incredible way to top-off our 146 hours on the course. A very rewarding race as we had work together as a team to pull it off. My 4th attempt at an expedition race and it feels good to finally get that full course finish on what, by all accounts, was a very tough course. We placed 29th out of the 52 starting teams.

If you're still reading this, you deserve a medal! Here are the links to most of our GPS tracks along the way:

http://www.movescount.com/moves/move220452299
http://www.movescount.com/moves/move220452261
http://www.movescount.com/moves/move220452250
http://www.movescount.com/moves/move220452227
http://www.movescount.com/moves/move220452182
http://www.movescount.com/moves/move220452162
http://www.movescount.com/moves/move220452141
http://www.movescount.com/moves/move220452121
http://www.movescount.com/moves/move220452118
http://www.movescount.com/moves/move220452104
http://www.movescount.com/moves/move220452095
http://www.movescount.com/moves/move220452086

C • Medal 8

Took another nap at midnight.

The early hours of the morning was our slowest section and we were now really just stumbling along, getting closer to the the 10-night-km target. Despite the slow pace, we were quite keen to push through to dawn to maximise our chances of making the cut-off, but we hit a really nasty section of thorny bush that we just couldn't find a sensible way through and eventually made the call to sleep at 5am hoping things would be easier and faster with daylight. We had covered about 11 river km during the night (GPS seems to have overread a bit at 15km due to signal bounce) so things were looking very tight.

Slept in the rain under a tree until dawn..

Progress was much easier in daylight again and we soon found our way through the wall of thorny bush and onto gradually better and better game paths. We came across the father & son pair from Reunion not long before we hit the road and they were keen to tag along as they had only had 10 mins sleep during the night and were struggling to navigate. We ended up doing most of the rest of the race with them and it was great chatting and sharing stories of our (mis)adventures during the race so far.

We made decent progress along the road and reached CP31 with 5 hours left to cover the remaining 7km to the abseil cutoff. The marshall assured us it would only take us about 3 hours so we were feeling a bit less stressed about the cut-off. It was still quite a rough slog up through the thorn trees to reach the Rooibos farm fields on the plateau above but once we had reached the easy tracks there, we could relax, take it all in and amble over to the abseil, which we reached 90 mins before the dreaded cut-off. Mission (mostly) accomplished. Relief!

The 100m abseil was spectacular as we had timed it with sunset and was the perfect reward for all the anxious slogging we had been doing over the previous 30 hours. The foot was now very much off the gas and we strolled our way into T7, where we decided to have a long sleep before the final 57km. Who wants to deal with sleep monsters on the bike when not absolutely necessary anyway!? ;)

Lazy transition with about 4 hours sleep in the middle.