El Reto: Day 3
Alright, so it’s been a bit of a while coming, what can I say, the off season is busy. You have lots of things to do, sit on your ass, eat greasy food, play xbox and drink beer. That’s a lotta stuff to fit into a small window of the season.
Day 3
Day 3 looks on paper, to be a super fun, super fast and easy day.
Little did I know what I had in store for me. Since the day was a bit faster, we got some bonus added sleep time as the race started an hour later than normal, though for this race we started in the center of the village. It was quite cool and loads of people gathered round to see us off
We were mostly smiling cause we thought today was all downhill, little did we realize what was on tap!
It was a quick start rolling right through the city village and then up the first of the day’s climbs. Again, I was feeling really good on the bike and happy to be out and ready for another day’s adventure.
The first climb took us up and up and up. At the top was a nice little gathering of the locals, cheering us on pushing us forward. I had slacked off a bit to take pictures and had to rally myself to bridge the gap up to Todd. Once I caught Todd on the road, I rallied him to grab my wheel and we bridged up to the Green Machine for a really fun singletrack descent through some flower fields, mint and other spices. It really smelled amazing (no pics it was too much fun!)
After we hit the days first descent we had another bit of climbing before we would come to the top and descend through some crazy farmland. Riding on a combination of farm roads and worker trails, we cut our way though the fields. Working right into this crazy mud chute, it had to be about 12-15 high and just wide enough for us. Only thing was it was so steep and muddy, I was having a hell of a time clipping in and managing to hold onto the bike as it slid down. There was no control, just riding a bucking bronco and bouncing off the sides for 200 meters.
Once we got out of the chute it was onto the road for one of the hairest road descents I’ve ever been on. The picture above really doesn’t do it any justice. This thing was steep, it made Bopple hill look flat. Swapping between cobbles and concrete, super windy and just blazingly fast. All the while the townsfolk & their dogs are dodging around us.
All the commotion wasn’t good. When I hit a flat spot I decided to wait up for Todd. After a few minutes, I figured he had a flat or something. Then a few riders came down and told me he had crashed. I made my way back up the hill to find him sitting on the fence, with just about every kid in town checking him out. He was in some good pain, had gone down at around 50-60kph on the cobbles, when a dog cut between us. Luckily his pack took the brunt of the blow and the rest was mostly just some deepish cuts, road rash and some muscle bruising. Silly roadies, at least being a roadie Todd was used to crashing at speed. After resting for a bit, we decided to coast the final few kilometers to the next checkpoint and have him taken back to the hotel so the doc could check his wounds and get him cleaned up. After triple checking he was ok and once we got to the checkpoint, we decided that I would go on solo.
Riding solo in an unknown country, and being pretty much at the rear of the field and not seeing anyone for a while was kind of scary and fun at the same time. After I left Todd, I had a hell of a road descent before I dived into the Jungle. I was speeding past the cars at 80-100kph and having all kinds of fun! Once I hit the jungle it was all downhill, fast and flowy farm roads. Just crusing on the bike.
Then came the cobbles, and the cobbles, and the cobbles and the friggin cobbles. 20 straight kilometers of descending cobbles at high speeds. I had to stop and make some fork adjustments cause my hands were going numb even with the fork taking off the edge. It was fun, but quite hairy in the corners as the rocks had a slight slickness to them. I knew if I went down, there was no one to pick me back up.
We descended down and down through the Macadamia Nut fields
The cobbles continued and continued, and finally ceased. From there it was some crazy fast and fun singletrack. It flowed so very nicely, only thing was it was sooo insanely humid and hot. I felt like my face was going to melt right off. Then I realized I’d not seen any tire tracks or arrows in a few kilometers. I got spooked quick. The realization that I was all alone, lost and in a jungle caused a panic. I mean I’m in a friggin jungle, I could get eaten by a goddam jaguar or something. I decided to turn around and make my way back to where I could find the last arrow. I seemingly wasn’t the only one who missed an arrow as my solo trek soon turned into a gang of 9 riders looking for the course. I had gone quite a way (about 4-5k) and managed to pick up a few stragglers. Luckily was able to get myself back on course and get moving forward.
As I got moving forward, I came to the 2nd suspension bridge of the day. Holy crap, this thing was all rickety, off kilter, about 200 meters long and about 50 meters in the air. It took me a good damn bit of time to cross the thing.
You can see here, I had to actually stop and move my bike to the other side of me. The bridge was swaying hard and really was leaning off to one side and I had to switch sides to feel comfortable. Once I was off the bridge, and now out of water it was one hell of a hike-a-bike out. I had no idea how far I had left go as I lost my computer. If felt like I was going to melt. I contemplated just sitting down and letting that jaguar eat me. Then I heard a few voices, and a few locals were on the climb observing us racers coming over the bridge and they had clean water!! Hallelujah!! I downed about 5 of those little sealed baggies of water (I’ve never seen water come in baggies). Got complety rejuvenated and was super pumped to find out that at the top of the climb, I had a few k of mostly road riding to get to the finish.
I railed it hard to the finish and was super pumped to get there! It had been a long 3 days and know it was to come to a close!! Todd was there waiting, he had been cleaned up and bandaged and managed to limp over and give me a hi-five for finishing. The race, the hotels, the course, the people, the food, the staff, everything about this race was 5 star across the board. I highly recommend it to anyone. Next year I’ll be on my honeymoon as this race kicks off, so until 2012 there’s an open spot, but I hope
to be back in the future!
November 9th, 2009 at 5:31 pm
Dang dude – looks sick!
Nice work!