We spent the first part of the morning shivering uncontrollably before the race began with another very strong start which heated us up pretty quickly as it was the hilliest of the days. We had no problems keeping up with our targeted group for the first 40 km at which point about 3 teams broke away on a monster climb. Minter and I moved to the front of the group which had splintered off by the top of the climb and then started the white-knuckled descent back down the other side of the mountain and at about 52km Minter hit a rock which dented his rim and put a small cut into the sidewall of the tyre.
We tried to re-seal the tyre but it was not working so I pulled out my brand new tube....confident that unlike yesterday, it would not have any holes in! We whip off the tyre, put a bit of air into the tube, and start remounting the tube.....only to realise I have been carrying a 26 inch tube around and we are both on 29ers. At this point we just started laughing....clearly I can't be trusted with bike spares. We put Minters spare tube on and had to pump it by hand. We had lost about 8 minutes and just decided that there was no point in killing ourselves any more....after what would be 2 disastrous days. The views were spectacular and we just rode along at a moderate pace. We even stopped for the first time since the race began at a water point and scoffed choccies (bar one's), bananas, and Minter ate some sort of pink looking sausage thing. We then stopped and took some photo's along the trails as the views were awesome with the snow covered peaks of the mountains in the background.
On the one hand, we are disappointed, but that is the nature of the sport and it is nice to have the opportunity to focus on th e pleasure of the sport rather than the pure race mentality.
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