Mission accomplished

2009's 94.7 done and dusted.









I broke the rear derrailleur cable on the Mountain bike ride on Saturday. Saw Doug afterwards; he explained a little about how to replace it. Also bumped into Lesley, Brett and Chris, was good to see you all!

anyway - the cable was broken and the Trance only had 3 gears. And it was the day before 94.7. I phoned a friend, and Gadget kindly agreed to fix it for me. While he was at it, he replaced the bent jockey-wheel (how and when did THAT happen) and the front rotor that was bent since Ride2Rhodes. Luckily I had all the spares lying around in a bike-box since last year's Sabie Xperience, and topped up for Ride2Rhodes.

Was difficult to keep the bike appropriately muddy while having to replace stuffs on it.

So the bike was like new again on Sunday morning.
It was a quick 1-hour cycle to Karen's house - she stays just about where the races starts - and then a long walk down the hill with cyclists racing up the hill.

A few phone calls to collect DK and Agteros (a hubber who used his cold as an excuse to ride with us) and off ... and finally it was time to go.

One false start, as the wind brought down the blow-up thingy at the start - but then we could go.

Loved the bit on the M1 - Chris and Lindsay passed us - Chris wearing the same bright-green shirt than on the mountain bike ride the day before - says he has 5 of them. Also chatted with a few D&D-ers along the way.

The city-loop was SO cool - a few climbs, but none TOO bad. Old buildings, places you'd never otherwise see. Francois decided he's done enough waiting, and sped off into the distance. David decided he's gonna finish the junglebar before starting to ride again. So we left him.

Finally we hit the speed-sections of Jan Smuts.
Realised we were in cut-off danger when we left the waterpoint just in front of the Cartrack Building with 15 minutes to spare, an the one on Malibongwe with 10 minutes to spare.

At the next waterpoint, Karen's legs was hurting, so we decided to stop for a quick massage. Quick wasn't so quick after all, the queue was long and moved slow. We left that waterpoint well after the cut-off (didn't get our numbers taken because we were in on time)

Now the race was on.
Agteros fed Karen some energy gels, and we took turns tu push and pull. We slightly missed the next cut-off, but due to some technicalities got through. We raced hard and made the next one with 7 minutes to spare,. We knew we were safe, but the adrenalin was pumping, so we skipped the last few watertables and chased straight for the finish, which we made with 20 minutes to spare.

thank you dk and agteros for the help!

official time was 6:22.
Thought you had only 6 hours to complete the race, so fully expected a DNF. But the results show on racetec, yaaay!