Steve's Cycling Blog

Today was to be one of the two longest of the tour at 163km – a decent length of ride no matter which way you look at it particularly coming in the middle of a stretch of six riding days in which we will cover 835km, but to make matters worse the wind turned 180 degrees overnight so when we awoke there was already a pretty decent headwind blowing!

All the usual morning things, but we really are getting up way too early – even with the long day ahead the cloud cover meant it was still too dark to set off till nearly 0800 so we could easily have had half an hour extra in bed!

I set off with Kevin, Kevin and Mateo aiming for 22 – 23 km/h into the wind and taking 1km turns at the front. We were going reasonably well, to begin with and stopped just after 40km as we were climbing out of a valley for morning pee, banana, and to take a bit of a break from the wind.

Nice spot for a break, particularly as we were out of the wind for a while.

We set off again aiming for the coke stop at 68km but first Mateo, then Australian Kevin began to drop off the back, so we regrouped and determined that Canadian Kevin and i would continue on together and Australian Kevin ad Mateo would do their own thing. Kevin and I were able to keep the pace up at around 24 km/h which under the conditions wasn’t too bad, but it was definitely hard going!

We stopped at the ‘Trou du diable’ (Devils’ hole) but the tide was low, and with the off-shore breeze nothing much was happening – apparently at high tide with the right conditions the waves come over the top of the canyon!

In to the town of Akfennir and we stopped at the first place that offered a chair and coke, which proved to be the cafe of a pretty nice looking hotel. Italio, Kevin and Mateo came in while we were sitting there, and Mateo was threatening to get a room at the hotel and the bus tomorrow!

Kevin and I continued on to the lunch stop which came as expected just on 80km – at this point we weren’t quite at half way through the day’s riding and seriously beginning to wonder how we were going to manage another 82km of these conditions.

Others came in while we were at lunch looking about as second had as we were feeling. We set off again and shortly after the lunch break we turned inland to skirt round the edges of a national park – this put us directly into the wind!

By this stage we were down to 16 – 18 km/h, and taking 4 – 500m turns at the front in an attempt to keep our speed up. At 102km we were climbing up a small rise which afforded some shelter so we stopped to catch our breath, eat and drink and wonder what was coming next!

We’d not gone much further when we spotted Sharita coming towards us in a TDA truck – we conferred and determined that we didn’t need anything, but she stopped anyway offering bananas, water, and the good news that there was a new coke stop about 27km from camp. I took a banana and two minutes later we set off again – Sharita seemed somewhat surprised that we had little to say, and were keen just to get back on the road and try and get this done!

We got a reprieve at around 110km when we turned back towards the coast and just like that, the wind was over our left shoulder – not exactly a tail wind, but it was now definitely on our side. We went from struggling to maintain 18km/h to a relatively easy 32km/h. Phew!

We flew the next 20ish km back out to the coast where once again we turned into the wind. By then it had dropped a little, but it was still tough going. We took a break at the coke stop and filled up with Sprite and cold fresh water (so much better than luke-warm TDA treated tank water ;-), then again when we were 15km from camp.

Our bikes taking a rest!

Max passed us a short time later also heading back along the track to provide water and sustenance to those continuing on, but we gave him the thumbs up and pushed on, getting into camp around 1700 well and truly ready to stop!

Though it wasn’t as long as some of the Gobi desert days on the Silk Route, it was certainly one of the toughest days of riding I’ve ever done – the worst news of all is that we have another 149km in the same direction tomorrow, with the conditions looking to be much the same!

We’re camped more-or-less outside some guys house who has very kindly provided water to allow us to have a decent wash – trying to get the sand out of everywhere! The trucks were fewer today, but with the wind the ones coming towards us whip up huge clouds of sand which then get blasted at us as they pass – it’s basically a case of close your eyes, close your mouth, hold your breath, hold on tight to the handle bars and wait for the blast to pass, then try and get the 3 – 4 km/h that they knock of your speed back again.

Rider’s meeting got pushed back 15 min to allow more people who were still out on the road to get in – Mateo had been going to pull out at lunch, but came in about 30min after us, with Australian Kevin coming in shortly after. In all I think around half of us made it through today and we’re pretty worn as a consequence.

Sadly dinner was pretty poor tonight – I understand that some days meat won’t be an option because of the conditions and that we’ll end up with a vegetarian dinner, but  what we got was basically some stir-fried capsicum / onions / carrots and rice – not what you need after a tough day on the road, and vastly inferior to what the vegetarians of the tour usually get when there is meat – let’s hope this was just an anomaly in the catering!

Lots of people had put their tents up against a wall to try and get some shelter from the wind, but it smelt pretty strongly of sheep and goat there so I’d opted for a place further out in the sand which made little difference to the wind, but I discovered when I tried to go to bed that it meant I was directly in line with some flood lights on the end of the building behind the wall which gave the effect of the midnight sun in my tent – sub-optimal to say the least!

View from my tent

Selfie of the day

(You’ve seen this one before 😉

Riding data