Mongolia Bike Challenge
The Gobi and a Stay in a Yurt
Special Report by Cory Wallace / 04.08.2011
Being in the leader’s jersey I was in no hurry to go anywhere and appreciated the chance to take in more of the views around us, instead of having my head down eating Marzio Deho’s (Olympia Bikes) dust.
At the first feed station a couple of riders attacked including Marzio Deho, which again caused a chaotic feeding frenzy as riders grabbed bottles and munchies and then sprinted to try and stay with the lead bunch.
What was a lead group of 20 riders was now an explosion of riders all over the place with myself sticking to Deho’s wheel as he gapped the bunch and put in a big effort to try and get away and make up the 8 minute deficit he acquired on Stage 1.
For an hour I stuck to Deho’s wheel and he asked me to pull through once, but I shrugged it off as my team mate Craig Richey (NOP Systems/BC Bike Race) was just a minute behind, chasing hard with Sven (Cube bikes, Germany).
Deho was having some troubles in the off camber creek crossings and the chasing duo soon joined us.
As a group of 4 now we descended across the barren prairies into the second aid station, which also marked the edge of the Gobi desert and 47 km of rough corrugated sandy roads ahead of us.
The next 2hrs was like sitting bare assed on a full throttled jack hammer. At first we tried to find lines around the corrugations but it soon became apparent that the corrugations were going to make like Chuck Norris and kick our asses till the finish line.
It seemed inevitable that the 4 of us would ride to the finish together and this was my downfall of the day as I let my guard down for a second as I tried to find a smoother line to the far left of the road, which left a small gap to Deho. He jumped on the opportunity and never looked back.
Going into the last feed station Deho had a 30 second advantage, and he blew by it which left an even bigger gap to Craig and myself as we were running on empty and made the logical decision to pick up water before biking into an unknown desert.
By the finish line Deho had 4 minutes on myself, Sven came in 3rd another 10 minutes back with Craig a few seconds back.
The gap to my pink leaders jersey was cut in half today by Deho but Craig and I have a few tricks up our sleeves, which we will try to employ in an effort to slow down the possessed Italian.
SleepMonsters
