Day two saw us race two stages: a 40km dirt stage in the morning followed by a hill climb time trial in the afternoon.
With a rolling start from the Chiefly hotel under police escort through the town, the official 'start' of the race was wild: undulating fast, rocky and sandy fireroad with people going mad! About three km's in, we shot down a steep section of rocky road (road, not the chocolate, that would be delicious!), hit a sandpit, which I was spinning through nicely when an old matecomes banging down into the sandpit, and as his weight and thus velocity was greater he was overtaking me mid-pit. The he took me out. At about 40km/hr!
I was on the ground in the sandpit with my bike on top of me, then his bike on top, and maybe even him as the cherry on top. Once I had ascertained that I had feeling in my legs, I hopped back up and jumped on my bike. Soon after I realised that my shifter had twisted right around, and changing gears was a balancing act.
Anyway, I pedalled on, as you do, with limited left-hand shifting. I was riding pretty well until the first checkpoint, about 25km in. following this there was a lot of loose and loamy corners and I was riding like an absolute idiot. Douglas came up behind me, which freaked me out but was ok, but a few km later when I turned off the trail into another section of singletrack I managed to get some chainsuck, and she shot off into the distance.
I was lucky enough to have a KOM rider behind me, egging me on. I was freaking out, breathing a bit too hard and fast for the effort I was putting in. He says "have a few deep breaths, don't panic!". So I did, and started to ride a little better, until I had another stack in a sandpit. Yes, I look like a victim of domestic violence right now.
I pinned as much as I could into the finish: a lap of Alice Springs velodrome. Somehow I minimised my loss to Jess to just over a minute. Yes! Still had the jersey but it was a narrow margin of 1:45 or so.
Feeling terrible, we tried to get some recovery time in, had a baguette at the Botanical gardens (well worth it!).
The hill stage was this evening, a short hurtfest up Anzac Hill--300m sprint. I was feeling rather second-hand, and didn't even feel like I could elevate my HR after the first couple of stages. However, I got in a groove and powered up. 1:05. Definitely not a course record but enough to take the win and keep the jersey another day, not to mention a 20sec time bonus. I would need it for day three: the endurance stage (more than I knew at the time!).
Camel burgers (or vegie ones for me!) at the park at the base of the hill, it was a great eve, donning another yellow at presentations. But our whole camp had our minds on the next day...
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| A pic from day one in the desert! |