Day 3 of the race

We woke up at 5am to a very cold morning.....apparently 4 degrees, so after a quick breakfast we got dressed for the ride and then spent roughly an hour shivering together as you need to go load your bags onto the trucks which take them to the next race village, meaning you can't keep on a jacket and track suit pants until near the end.

We ended up in a group with pretty much the same riders as yesterday and stayed with them until the 2nd water point at about 96km. Minter is a lot stronger than I am and to be fair he has been a legend. Coming into the water point, everyone in the group was planning to stop as we knew the main climb of the day was at about 110km, so we moved to the front of the group and I gave Minter my bottles and I rode straight through. He filled the bottles and then chased me down, leaving the group in his dust. A few minutes later Minter went over a thorn and the sealant spurted out of his tyre, but as he looked down in surprise, he hit a muddy patch and his wheel slipped out, giving him a one sided mud bath and helping to lift my waning spirits. :-). Fortunately he did not hurt himself!!

We then hit the main climb of the day at around 110km and it was around 5km with switchbacks up the mountain (we had now entered the Drakensberg ......South Africa's highest mountain range). It brought back a lot of memories of my childhood, and I can remember being about 6 years old and climbing Mont Aux-Sources as a family. Mom, dad, and my two older sisters. I clearly remember complaining that they were all walking to fast and that I was tired. Well, not much has changed, other than I am now 38 and it was Minter rather than my dad shouting at me to hurry up.

From the top of the mountain to the bottom there was a timed Red Bull run with separate prizes for the fastest times. We were flying down and I was marvelling at my courage and bike skills and contemplating whether I should take up downhill racing. That was the last thought in my mind when I lost control and hit a rock at break-neck pace. I yelped out as it was flung off the bike. Minter says that he braked to a stop, turned around and I was still rolling at that point. Very very very fortunately I just lost some skin on my right knee, but took a hard knock on my thigh. I jumped back onto my bike and we pedalled off with me in a lot of pain, but as we rode it eased up. We then arrived at Sterkfontein dam and were flying along the dam wall with Minter pulling me along, encouraging me all the way as we managed to overtake one more team on the run into the race village.