Out of the race at the end of stage 3 :(

Day 1 of the race was grotty. The first hour-and-a-half went great and we were lying in the top 25. Then I had a small crash that took about 20 minutes to recover from. Except I never really recovered and felt horrible for the rest of the day and we came in only 44th position. I was hoping that day 1 was an anomaly and day 2 would go better, however I went through the same thing during day 2, except worse. I grovelled through the latter half of the race - I’ve never felt so lousy on a bike. My legs were tight, knees were sore and even my ankle was sore.

Strategy for day 3 was to take it easy and allow my body to get over whatever was afflicting it. But my ankle felt worse and worse and my legs felt like big lumps of lead. The final water point was only 2kms from the race village at Riversdale before it went out on a final loop of 20kms. I decided that the direct route home would be kinder to my body and pulled out.

Nicole came to fetch me in Riversdale the following day, and I sat waiting on my own at the Riversdale high school feeling very sorry for myself. All of this training and preparation, just to ride 3 days. Not what I’d planned, and nothing I could do about it.

Kevin paired up with a new partner for stage 4, but Lady Luck was also to get the better of him as he had a whole night without sleep and then got sick in the morning. He pulled out at the first water stop of stage 4 feeling very weak. Luckily though he recovered during the course of the day and was able to start stage 5 and finish all the subsequent stages.

Right now neither of us are feeling very much like we’d like to do Epic ‘06. A change of scenery is needed - maybe our next stage race challenge will take us to TransAlps or TransRockies. We’ll see next year.

Have a look at our race pics.