Day 1, 113km, 2400m ascent
We had gotten to our start chute almost late and we right at the end of our C and D chute. Not ideal! The first 30kms were flat more less. Celina took off and we were pushing hard to catch up. I could feel my back wheel getting soft and had to stop and pump it. That had us being left behind again. We then went on our own and saw lot of other people repairing and pumping. The tubeless tyres didn’t hold under the tough terrain with lot of thorns and rocks in Robertson area. I had to stop again to pump both wheels and so did Celina. We reached water point 1 and found out there was only one pump so took a while to pump the wheels properly.
Off we went up to steep climbs and beautiful views opened to us. Even though there was a bit of fog and overcast. We had to push for a while but not too long. I felt quite strong there and pushed nicely up the hills and was enjoying the down hills. I must it was quite rocky challenging up and down.
As I was thinking that we are catching up and enjoying myself I was flying off my bike bruised my leg quite a lot but mostly my front tyre went completely flat. Long story short it took long to fix. I ended up putting tube in.
Celina waited for me at the bottom of the climb and off we went again. We hit another climb and my energy dropped. I saw and heard water point 3 from the top but it took longer than I thought to get there.
From there it was bit less hectic. And we managed to finish still in 11th place but we had lost about 30 min to 9th and 10th ladies teams.
Once at the finish another marathon starts. First find a tent then clothes to chance into, wait a queue for a shower, wash dirty shoes, go for massage, take bike into service, reply to all messages and write a blog, eat! The camp is quite spread out so lot of walking is involved!