Steve's Cycling Blog

So the rain started about midnight! This was far from a welcome development given that the wind was still blowing strongly across the desert. Knowing we had 146km to ride that day made it even less welcome!

Stage eight rider notes

The theory went that the wind would be less strong in the morning, so despite time moving forward an hour when we crossed into Mongolia, it was still; Bags 0545, Breakfast 0600.

Shortly after 0500 I took the shovel for a walk in the dark to find a suitable hillock to provide some shelter while I took care of ‘morning business’. Back to my tent where I discovered it was 2ºC, which factoring in the wind and the rain it was no surprise the draft round my nether regions was less than pleasant!

As it got lighter it became clear that the weather was worse than expected – the wind was still strong, but the rain was constant, and the cloud and mist low, so Andreas made the call that we’d only ride to the lunch stop at 60km, and that they would then transport us in to town from there. Some good news on a pretty grim morning.

Even so, a number of people elected not to ride at all (and frankly I don’t blame them). The remainder of us set off about 0615 after a good breakfast of porridge with fruit in – the closest approximation to what us Westerners call breakfast that we’d seen in over a week!

Rob, Ivan and I were joined by Will this morning, and the four of us set off at a reasonable pace (given the conditions) and were travelling well together for the first hour or so taking 2km turns at the front to break up the wind for the other riders following along.

At times the visibility was down to about 200m, and for some reason Mongolians don’t consider cloud/mist/rain to be adequate reason to turn on their headlights…! This gets pretty tricky when it’s a relatively narrow two-lane road – at one point I was leading our wee group when I saw a vehicle coming towards us with it’s lights on (surprise, surprise) – I then realised that there was actually another vehicle overtaking that one, so it was in our lane and moving fast – time to pull as far to the right as we could!

Slowly but surely the combination of wind, rain and hills began to take it’s toll and our speed dropped. Rob was really struggling with the combination, and I was concerned that he was on the edge of hypothermia. Even more concerning to me was that if we didn’t get moving more quickly I was headed that way too.

We’d leap-frogged back and fourth with another larger group of our riders as each stopped for ‘rest’ stops etc, and as we passed one of them Rob elected to stop. Ivan, Will and I decided to push on, and immediately picked up the pace which really helped with the ‘being cold’ issue – the increased speed and corresponding increased heart rate mage a huge difference.

The three of us stuck together and although the wind had dropped by now the rain was constant and it hadn’t got about 2ºC, so we were well pleased to see a small cluster of three of our vans just after 60km.

Having five layers on, and having been moving pretty well for the last 20km meant that I was warm in the middle, but my feet were pretty frozen. Ivan was colder, and had got to the point where despite gloves his hands were painfully cold. Will was just cold to the point of shivering shortly after we stopped.

I passed on my concern to Miles, one of the crew, about Rob’s condition and they sent one of the vehicles back to check on everybody, but shortly later Rob arrived in to the lunch stop having added extra layers of clothing and managed to pick his pace, and consequently heart rate and temperature back up.

While we waited for others to arrive in, and vans to collect us to come from town we huddled together in the back of the lunch van (which at that point was mostly empty as everything was set up for lunch).

About an hour after we’d got in most others had made it through and two vans arrived to collect us and take us in to town. Jackie was also pretty close to hypothermic so we put her between Erwin and I on the back seat of the van to try and warm her up as we headed in (it took about 45 min before she was looking a better colour and was back to being her normal perky self).

To prove how quickly things can change in a desert environment, by the time we got to the hotel (about 1:15 later), there was a clear blue sky and bright sunshine – but the wind was back!

Over the course of the afternoon we’ve watched one huge thunderstorm pass by just to the south of us, one to the east, and a sandstorm has blown right over us in quite spectacular fashion!

I’ve also managed to catch up with the washing, which thanks to the wind (before the sandstorm) is also pretty much dry.

Tomorrow I need to wander down into the town (our hotel is up on the hill above) and change some more money (at hopefully a better rate) as well as get my hair cut!

Riding data