Steve's Cycling Blog

The day dawned clear, bright and calm – if a little chilly. After rider’s meeting and another great breakfast from the hotel we set off.

Heading out of Sajnsand (thanks for the shot Will)

As you can see below it was a pretty straight forward day ahead, with the only real concern being the possibility of wind later on.

Sajnsnd to Darlanjargalan rider notes

To begin with six of us were riding together; (big) Rob, Ivan, Will, Charlie, Dan and I. Initially the wind was to the front so we were taking 1km turns leading a line of six.

Over time the wind shifted to become more of a cross wind so we switched to a staggered pattern – initially trying to run six abreast across the road. This was way too wide for safety, and after a bit of confusion we stopped, had a bit of a ‘chat’ about it and I organised us into two rows of three. For some this was the first time riding in a formation like this and it took a while to get into the flow of how each person moved forward, but within a few rotations it was running like clockwork and meant that every third km you were in a ‘bad’ position, and every sixth in the worst, but also meant that for four of every six in a relatively comfortable place!

As the day progressed the wind dropped away again and our group fragmented somewhat as we rode more-or-less at our own pace. We also caught up with Paul and Erwin. With 15km to go I decided that I needed some time on my own, so tried to drop back from the group, but that was too slow, so I pushed on past the various people ahead of me to ride out on my own.

That all went well, until about 5km from camp when the wind started to pick up again and I was regretting being on my own a little – though this didn’t slow me down too much, and I was first into camp and some welcome soup before picking a spot for my tent (with the back of the tent facing into the wind, and some suitably large rocks providing additional holding power to the pegs)

View from my tent – it didn’t look quite so lunar in person, but pretty close.

(Big) Rob and Ivan arrived shortly after I did and also got their tents up -then the real excitement began as we were hit by a decent sized sandstorm which threatened to send the cooking tent into orbit, and did send Rob’s tent tumbling across the plain.

Between us Rob and I managed to catch it, get it back where it was meant to be, and with some effort anchored to the ground and more-or-less upright again – unfortunately not before ending up with a 60cm tear in the floor!

As other riders trickled in we helped with getting tents up in the very blustery conditions, before a rider’s meeting at 1800 followed by dinner.

Rob and Bruno pulled into camp about 1830 as we were eating dinner after a 12 hour day on their bikes. Ruth on the other hand is still out there somewhere and from all reports determined not to give up!

Despite the fact that it’s only ten past seven I’m now sat in my tent because it’s really the only even semi-comfortable place to be – I say semi-comfortable because the flapping is a bit annoying, and as the sun’s still shining it’s pretty warm in here, but the alternative of being outside with the dust being blown in your face, and the windchill dropping the temperature significantly isn’t worth it.

All we can really do is hope that this current storm blows itself out in the night because riding into this would be pretty much impossible, as I’m sure Ruth (and the crew sweep Will) can currently attest, so covering the 151km from here to our next camp could become something of a logistical issue!

Riding data