Alice Day 3

Well I woke up with a sore ‘froat’ (as Dean calls it!!) this morning which put me in a grumpy mood for the start of the day, it was going to be a hard day and now just a little bit more suffering would be required!!

Today was the longest stage at 77km and was a new stage for this year, they had estimated it to take the winners around 3hrs and 15. On paper it all looked and sounded pretty straight forward, with 17km on sealed bike bike path and then a section of sealed road for 12km. I hadn’t studied the course description too closely and was quite surprised how tricky the first 17km were, lots of steep walking pinches and again some more very rough, sharp and loose Centralian rock! I was aware of being quite conservative here as it would come back to bite me for sure. Everyone was a little more controlled at the start today, Jess had pushed forwards into first position and I found myself riding with Anna Beck, in her yellow jersey, for the first 17km, she seemed to be feeling some fatigue from the last couple of days, we were both about the same pace and it was nice having some company!

We got to the first feed station at 25km and from here we hit the bike track. I felt decent here, just so long as it stayed pretty flat and I was sure we had a bit of a tail wind. I noticed Anna starting to loose contact with me, so I made an effort to stay consistent and strong. Pretty soon I caught up to two fellas who were happy to roll some turns with me, we set a cracking pace, with me dipping into the red zone and starting to struggle quite a bit, but I knew Anna was not feeling comfortable so it was best that we kept pushing. Another rider joined us from behind and said that Anna had joined a strong group of about 8 and were only 200m behind us, I was tempted to sit up and wait so we could move with the larger group but we decided to keep pushing at our pace. I have to buy this lovely guy a beer as he was so accommodating in helping me out, he was happy to sit on the front and drive it, as I was no longer capable of rolling turns with any pace!

So we hit the bitumen and caught sight of the group behind us, it seemed they had caught us, so again we just kept pushing, now with two lovely blokes putting in some solid turns. We were now heading into a head wind and it was very open and exposed on the road. After assuming that the bunch behind were onto us we looked around and they were nowhere to be seen! So we continued to push on and picked up another couple of workers for our roadie bunch.

We got to the second feed zone and saw the approaching bunch about 300m behind, they had pretty much caught us, we were swallowed up and joined their ranks soon after. We continued riding as a bunch on the fire road but it all got smashed up as soon as we made our way up onto the top of the escarpment, it got very rough, loose and tricky again, I was really suffering at this point, my throat felt it had almost closed up and I was coughing up solid chunks of yellow phlem. Some of the descents were really sketchy and Anna Beck opted to walk a couple, somehow I got to the bottom in one piece and also on top of my bike, bonus!

So a gap opened up, it couldn’t be far now so I just pushed on through yet some more sand until I was eventually spat out onto the bitumen road that led me home to the BMX track. I hardly had the energy to pump over the jumps and across the finish line….. so happy to be done, now it was off to the chemist to get some froat gargle!