Adventure Quest Africa (2)

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Leg 6: 45 km Bike

Cindy Van Zyl / 03.09.2002

T5 – T6: Kommando Drift Dam – Kwaggaskirk
2:00am: We had to get to T6 (the halfway mark) within 24 hours of the leading team having passed through this transition. We had only twelve hours to play with and had no choice but to tackle the next fifty-kilometre cycle.

We were heading into the mountains of which Zirk had said: “They will separate the real men from the rest!� The slant of the road was unforgiving and the surface was muddy and slippery. As we climbed, the wind blew with more and more conviction and the temperature dropped to well below freezing.

Towards the early hours of morning the incline of our climb, the slippery mud and the inability to stay awake in our saddles forced us to push our bikes. Riaan was engaged in a bitter battle with sleep deprivation and by 5:00 am Kobus called a halt. We were progressing at only 5km/h and it made sense to sleep for an hour.

We lay our emergency blankets (thin strips of red foil) on the frozen ground, spread our flysheet over us and huddled together for warmth. I slept as if in a five-star hotel. Being taller, the guys’ legs protruded from under the flysheet. They appeared grateful that the brief rest was over.

There are no words to describe the cold that assaulted us upon waking at around 6:30am. Soon it started to rain droves of ice. In no time the black hills had changed into a white fairyland. And lo and behold! The sleet had transformed the muddy road into a rock-hard, frozen path. We could cycle again!

We passed a camera crew fast asleep in their vehicle, huddled in thick down sleeping bags. We had not the heart or the energy to wake them. Approximately a kilometre behind us we saw a team approaching. It turned out to be the Swazi’s; they hadn’t slept yet. It was good to be chased again, but we quickly shook them off.

Brian was fighting off a bout of nausea in his own peculiar way: eat, sprint, stop, tell a joke; eat, sprint, stop, tell a joke and so on, up-and-up the murderous slope of the mountain. We crested the mountain as a shaft of sunlight broke through the clouds. Below us curved a beautiful downhill, spotted with ice and frozen mud; this was to be our first ‘free kilometres’ for the entire race thus far. And how we worked for it!

At 10:30 we biked into the transition in 11th place. The mountains had begun to take their toll on the teams…

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