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| Start of the biking, 9 bikes & 2 support vehicles - rocky terrain |
I'm back in one piece after an awesome week biking in
Morocco. The week was full on technical
trails with slow rocky ups, fast rockier downs, and the odd switch back road to
negotiate. The drops off the trails were totally unforgiving and a little
unnerving on the first day, coupled with a different bike, new group and my
usual anxiety!
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| One of the lunch stops |
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| The downside of stopping in a river bed is the knowledge that the route can only go upwards! |
Bits of me hurt that I had forgotten I had and I've gained a
few bruised to go with the stripy suntan.
That’s not to say it was wall to wall sunshine! No we had some
particularly vicious headwinds with a 1.7c chill factor and on the last day
torrential rain that changed the dust to mud and resulted in a ‘Plan B’ route.
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| Stopping for a rest to enjoy the view |
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| Fast easy switch back road |
Never having ridden a bike for this distance for one day
never mind 6 consecutive days, I was expecting to struggle more than I did – so
I think the running must be giving me more stamina than I thought. Fortunately
I only fell off once, and that was on a difficult technical bit so it wasn't at
speed and got away with a couple of good bruises.
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| Resting at the top of another climb |
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| Looking back down the valley |
For those that are getting to know my style, it didn’t
change, slow on the ups, fast on the downs. Happy with the technical bits, not
so much on the slow slogs upwards but I did better than I expected to and only
opted to use the support vehicle once (and I was not on my own).
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| All smiles when I get to the top. |
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| Time for the leader to find another route as the path is no longer there! |
All in all I clocked up 273km – pretty dam good for a
mountain bike!
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| Top of the gorge, lunch stop. |
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| Wet and cold hugging the fire - we were steaming! |
Weeks activity 13th – 19th February
:
Saturday – No
training (flying out)
Sunday – 35k,
steep technical trail
Monday – 65k,
lovely run but very windy today.
Tuesday – 55k,
good mix of terrain
Wednesday – 45k,
amazing descent today
Thursday – 32k,
lots of technical up today
Friday – 41k,
lashing rain and cold.
(Goatfell
Race 15.5km / 870m)
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