Last day of Riding into “the Windhoek Rest Day”

Today was one final test of the “century week” and what we were actually mentally and physically capable of. It was one of my hardest days on tour thus far. I was up most of the night with a headache, not a migraine, but a headache brought on by a massive knot in my neck of stiff muscles. This didn’t make getting up any easier, especially since I have reached the part of the tour that I have entered a zone of unrecoverable exhaustion. The team time trial was this morning, which I had to skip out on, I just decided to get on my bike and ride and *hopefully* make it through the day. Some of the fast racers, my friends decided to take it easy today and ride with me which was really nice because I generally never see them unless it is at camp. We goofed around in the morning and had a good time riding together. At lunch the headwind had become much stronger. We carried on , as the day was 160 again. At 110km we rolled into the Windhoek International Airport for a “coke stop” and then as we pulled out we were facing very difficult hills and headwinds. My body was still very tired from the last four days of intense, difficult riding so every minute felt like it hurt me. At one point I got off my bike and sat on the side of the road feeling sorry for myself. We had started to pass large estate homes and it has been the first time in a while that it was evident that there is some money in this area and the “culture shock” of the trip is coming to an end. The difficult riding began to take a toll on my psyche and I started to feel like I wish the end was more in sight that it is. I got on my bike again and finished off the day, ending in the beautiful, but modern and “developed” city of Windhoek. This city is beautiful but could have been in North America or Europe or anywhere for that matter. It didn’t feel like Africa anymore…

When we arrived at camp to see many other tired, spent riders it was evident that this day had not only challenged me, but others too and the last dirt section is just around the corner, where were we going to muster up the energy to pull that off? Well we had a whole day of mall trips etc. to figure that out, oh yeah, but only after we had changed our tires and done our laundry and multiple other “rest day chores..”

Four months is a long long time.