Monday, October 22, 2012

Last hill

Today was the penultimate day of the bike leg and we knew it would be a tough one. We're now officially in the tropics and the heat is intense, so we set off at dawn to get some miles in before the temperature soared. The morning was relatively easy going, but progress was slowed by a two hour wait to get through a construction zone clearing yet another land slip. All day, the final 40km, the last major climb of the trip, loomed large in our minds.

Our strategy was to leave the climb until the last few hours of daylight, so after a siesta in the shade in a hospital car park watching the coming and going, we set off. Unfortunately we wildly under-estimated just how broken the last week has left us, and our pace up the hill fell well short of our usual mark. We eventually crawled into Pingbian an hour and a half after sunset, both completely spent.

No comments:

Post a Comment