Day 1
13th in Category
102nd Overall

What a day ! These guys certainly know how to put on a race / carnival / celebration.

Today was huge for us. Starting with packing up our accommodation in Cape Town, and moving bikes, wife, three kids and ourselves to a mobile home for the next week.

5:30am Wake up / breakfast
6:30am pack the mobile home for the next week
7:00am Checkout - head to Prologue Venue about 45mins drive
8:00am Work out what the hell we had to do, where to go, where to start.
9:00am kit up and pre race warmup
10:05am Prologue race start
11:30am race finish
12:00pm lunch
1:00pm depart to beginning of stage 1 race venue 2hrs drive
3:30pm Find bikes / take to mechanic for tune
4:30pm Nutrition and get gear ready for tomorrow
6:00pm dinner
7:00pm day finished - prepare for 5am start !

Prologue - 23km / 730m climbing

What this really meant was riders heading off on 25 sec intervals over a 23km course mainly single track with some huge climbs.

The atmosphere was awesome, and climbing up to the start chute we had no idea what to expect. I found myself surprisingly calm. Once on the bike i thought just focus - down the ramp, through the manor house - yes that's right we navigate down the inside corridor of the estates manor house, and down the stairs. All of this is televised live, so i was happy to get through unscathed and then hit the single track.

The first riders started at 6:45am, so my fears came to fruition after 3 mins from starting when we hit our first traffic jam. With language barriers, poor bike skills, narrow trails with huge thorns if you went off track, or simply just arrogance, we spent the next 1 hr working on ways to overtake. Given this is a team event, it was hard enough to get 1 person through let alone 2 riders.

After a while we found a little niche and settled in with a faster couple of riders, which made things bearable. Saying this the tracks were awesome, just needed less than 1200 riders on them at one time. One of the groups we were riding with had an ex Sth African pro riding in the team, and you know you are at something special when a helicopter comes over the ridge less than 50m from you to track you on film. This just doesn't happen in any other race.

It was a solid start for us both, and we are a lot less nervous knowing that we can hold our own with others on the bike, climbs, etc. it was a great intro to the race, and to clear the jitters and pre race nerves.

Tomorrow is another day, and is flagged as the 1st and one of the hardest stages of the race. The weather is also looking a little ominous with somewhere between 15 -30mm of rain forecast. After a bluebird day today it is hard to believe.

We will see how things unfold - we are both feeling strong and ready for what they through at us - well we think so anyway.