Stage 5
Southerland to Cape Town
7 November 2014
372km - Team Supported Race Stage
Liaison: 286km
Special: 86km
Special Stage
That was a SLEEP!
I suppose that I had been having too much of a good time. I had been going to bed later than was necessary and besides the epic riding, really enjoying the chatting and socialising aspect of the race. It’s so easy to get involved in a chat with the service crews and hear their stories and backgrounds.
But, that’s a core part of the reason I really like this race. I think I am good enough to be reasonably competitive. I think with the right bike and a few less kilo’s and a couple more laps around Table Mountain on my mountain bike a top 10 is not out of reach. A stage podium with a large dose of luck and faultless navigation could also could be possible. However great those would be, there are so many aspects to multi-stage racing that are just plain good fun and an enormous privilege, that conking out for the night without doing my roadbook was a small price to pay.
One thing that I had gotten right before I headed off to bed was to take some photo’s of the roadbook and post them onto the forum.
A frustration for me as an internet spectator is not knowing exactly where the route goes and more importantly, where the specials start. This is a necessary evil as without the secrecy, two things may happen; there will be some who may be tempted to get outside help. Or, some internet supporter trying to be helpful because they can see real time the mistakes phones or SMS’s the rider.
As I was sure, no one from our little band of racers would be vaguely interested in cheating, or that the people on the forum would do such a thing, I posted the route up with no worries to my conscience.
This is what a un-worked on road book looks like.
Normally there’s a bunch of colouring in that happens the night before. The reason for “marking your roadbook” is;
• Get at least a bit familiar with the day.
• Because there is a lot of info in such a small space, giving colours to the different bits of data is not only helpful when belting along, but can be life saving. Sort of an early warning system.
The left hand box has in big numbers the accumulative distance from the time you leave the bivouac. The small numbers on the right are the leg length and seldom if ever used.
The middle box gives an idea of what is going to happen in a simplified hieroglyph with some code or added info
The right hand box is an info box with instructions, rules of the road, GPS positions of waypoints, etc.
Because the French invented rallying the unit standard on rallies is always in French. It’s quite cool as it adds another degree of complexity to an already pretty convoluted story.
Here's all the code translated;
So for example at 24.79km this is a triple caution. Triple cautions are to be marked in red and are super dangerous. They can be lethal if not approached with a lot of caution. The instructions say there is a ditch and to ride around it, not go through it. On the video the guy lying in the dirt was caught out by this one. You also get to hear just how easy it is to screw this kind of warning up.
Mostly the things that ruin a good day are the FZ’s and DZ’s These are French for start of speed zone and end of speed zone. E.g. at 29.72km. this speed zone lasts until 30.63km. Any speed over 100kph in this zone is going to collect a few minutes.
At 29.72 there is also a GPS waypoint shown in the bottom right corner of the right hand box. These are God sends. When very lost, these can be of enormous relief. They are a safety feature for those that get hopelessly lost. Still, it doesn’t help to enter these in wrong the night before… as I have done. A single digit wrong can mean looking for a waypoint in the arctic ocean instead of the track next to klipberg in the Richtersveld.
Anyway, if you haven’t figured it out by now, navigation is not just critically essential to be competitive, it is for all including the slowest and fastest literally a life saver.
So much for that navigation lesson… Juan and Thomas were hugely complimentary about my snoring ability,
Ian was nerding with his roadbook.
I wasn’t even going to bother, I would try riding it blind. I was reassured by Robert who had had a tough day 3 and thus didn’t mark his day 4 and had said that it wasn’t an issue.
I had filled the tanks to the brim in Calvinia and on working out distances realised that with this stage to be the most technical and short, I was hopelessly too full on fuel, I needed to lose at least 10 litres to be safe. I had been on 2 previous Amagezas in this area and knew that being too heavy would be unpleasant.
Getting rid of 10 litres of fuel at 5am is not easy. I knew there was a poorer community a few blocks from the start and found some kind soul who was happy to be given 10 litres of fuel into an old bucket.
Johnathan not in a queue… but surely asking Alex where one is
At the start of the liaison Alex shepherded us into our starting order and unlike in the past, we then all rode in formation to the start of the stage about 18ks away. I had a mild panic attack as I had misplaced my glove in the faffing at the start so had resolved to ride the stage with one glove. Fortunately on the 18ks to the start, it was where I put it – in my pocket. Chop!
I hate to say it but I was missing Justin’s organised presence.
We stopped at some non-descript little track and lined up ready to go;
This time I was sent off on my own. By being 13th the day before, I was up near the sharp end. My bike is not built for technical trails and I was sure to hold up a bunch of quicker guys behind me.
A final empty of the bladder and Stage 5 was a GO!
There is something about a last stage. I felt almost like I didn’t want to do it. Not because there was some dread about it, but precisely because this was the last time. A bit like regretfully drinking the last bit of a fine bottle of wine that accompanied an amazing meal with brilliant friends and wishing to be able to start at the beginning again. All the pleasure of those moments have gone by and this last sip will, too, signify a closure of sorts that opening another bottle will not bring back.
But all good things come to an end if only, because by their endings, they allow the next good thing to start.
It was technical and tight, just tons of 2nd and 3rd gear jeep tracks through farmers lands over Karoo type hills and valleys that only on the Amageza one is privileged enough to see.
We had all been warned about some hectic triple cautions that I was really trying to keep an eye on. Because of the tightness my head was in the roadbook quite a lot. At the indicated triple, Walter on 166 had come off pretty hard only seconds in front of me. You can see him in the video still on the floor but thankfully not hurt much.
On watching the video, I was reminded that as opposed to an adventure ride where when a someone comes off like this, it is normally a good time to stop and have a good chat and take pictures. This was a race and a quick, “are you ok”, is really all that one does. Then it’s back on it, thanking my stars that it was not me.
At one stage I saw Riaan and gaggle of riders coming back towards me. I should have not second guessed myself. I was sure I was right, but here were all the front runners coming back?!!
I turned back and soon realised that I must have been right all along so left the gaggle and made my way back to the previous roadbook mark that I knew to be correct a few k’s back from where I’d turned around, synced my trips to the roadbook there as Riaan arrived to do the same and carried on.
It was interesting to see that he too, quickly abandoned casting about looking for the right route and made his way back to the last known place. Riding around in circles looking for the right turning only confuses the decision making because the trip meters quickly become useless – they keep picking up distance whilst on the roadbook one is not. It’s best to stop guessing and go back to the last know point and work it out from there.
Shortly after that though, I had the biggest scare of the whole race. What should have been a triple caution was unmarked on a straightish piece of track, (the blur is some water from a just crossed river), see nothing and the route book said so too.
What made it even worse was the deep rut about 15 meters before it that threw me into the air only to land with no time to sort out the mess up ahead.
Then the real danger was a deep erosion ditch across the track with sharpish rocks in the opposite bank and an erosion gully leading into it right on the line.
I was doing about 70 when I saw the gully, managed to tap off, shed a little bit of speed, whack the big rut and get a bit airborn to land and see the ditch.
I’ve watched the video of it and my recollection of the event is far slower than the video. Time really does slow down when about to see your arse!
I can remember thinking,
“Shit! Ok, hang on through this rut!”
“Oh no!, Look at that! Did I miss it in the roadbook?” (look at all the panic marks)
“ok, you’ll never brake in time! Even if you try to keep braking, the nose will go in and you’ll whack those rocks!”
“That’s not an option!”
“Just whack open the throttle, weight back and hope!”
“Muther #)@(*$@&!!”
In the video, this all takes just 3 seconds.
That would have broken something on me or the bike if I had gone into it for sure. I dodged a big bullet there.
The track wound its way on for a few more k’s and then to the escarpment. I’d heard lots of bad tales about this section of the track but it was really very pleasant with not much to deal with other than the loose shale stuff around the switch backs. The sharpest and steepest had a gaggle of photographers. I can’t help but think of a vulture when this happens… But they do get the shots!
With less than 15k’s to the finish I came down of a jump and half the right hand footpeg broke off?
It’s not fun riding like that. I didn’t realise just how much one needs them.
For the last bit, it was possible to ride it quite quickly. It was relatively straight old jeep track with some river crossings with water in them. But I had a mix of joy and paranoia going on. The joy was all about just living the moment of being close to the finish of something that was a really big goal coming to fruition. And the paranoia was the fear of it being taken away by some silly root or rock or inattention. I was gunning it where it was absolutely safe to do so, but backing off far in advance of anything remotely looking like trouble. I imagine it’s something that all people feel when they’ve put so much into something.
What a day! A stunning route with amazing weather and the bike purring away under me.
Andy the marshal was at the finish to congratulate us.
I’d done it, the racing stage was over. But there was a hell of a long way to the end of the day’s stage. 317k’s to be exact!
