Thursday, 25 June 2009

Day 10 - Elandsberg to Stuttgardt

Today was horrible! Early in the ride my right knee started hurting. Pedalling was impossible without experiencing intense pain. To add to our woes the wind is howling. Riding into the wind is draining. We then had problems with the one tyre. Somehow the valve stem tore and we had to replace our home made tubeless conversion. It actually went rather quickly. Eventually the pain in my knee was so bad we resorted to walking more than riding. The last 15km over fairly flat terrain took over 2 hours. We ended up riding only half the intended distance and have gone to ground in the hope of me recovering sufficiently to continue tomorrow. The alternative does not excite me. There have already been 5 withdrawals from the race and I don't want to add my name to that list.

3 comments:

Carine said...

thank you for the update, mike, i was very relieved to see you are still out there

hang in there, you two!
the whole office here is following your progress and sharing the agony of the possibility of not finishing. take a rest day if needed - i hope that knee recovers quickly so that you can go chase Tim down ...

steve said...

ja, keep it up boys.

why can't you just park off on the back whilst glenn pedals?

surely that's easier than both walking?!!!

J_Woolnough said...

Lol, well i know that Glenn is strong, but pulling 100kg with each leg for an extended period of time - and over some very rough terrain - might just put him in a worse position than Mike :P