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19/02/09, stage 18, Khartoum to Rufaah

Ok so change of strategy. I decided that from now on the aim is to leave as early as possible in the morning to beat the heat. I’ll use the morning to make some tempo to get to lunch, and then after lunch I can decide whether I’ll finish the ride with focus or whether I’ll craze about. If it’s an easy day I can do whatever I want in the afternoon. If it’s a tough day I’ll be able to make as many kilometers possible in favorable conditions and then have more than enough time to finish the day. Moreover, if I’m in need of riding with a group I’ll just have to ride slower to find one, instead of cycling hard to catch up with one.

The first day of the last three day stretch i more
or less applied this strategy, and it was a great day! The day after that I started crazing about from the start: leaving late, taking a long coffee break at 20k, finding out I was  in need of a group to ride with at 35k, fnding a group at 50k but then not having the time to take a rest when the body needed one, leading to being completely drained at 65k. That sucked. So from now on its focus in the morning and then I’ll see what I’ll do in the afternoon.
Today I rode with Baldr all day. He seems to understand as well that he can’t go full out till Cape Town, so we took it a bit easier today and had a great day of riding. After lunch we were joined by Steve and Clement, and they also got the point now: we’re not nearly there yet! So we rode at a comfortable pace and had a nice and easy ride with a good tail wind. 
Today was a proper confidence booster for me. The day I had to get on the lunch truck dented my confidence (yes, you wouldn’t suspect it but my confidence is actually dentable 🙂 ) so I was glad that today’s ride undented it again. Untill we hit a tough day again. The easy days untill now have been quite easy, but the hard days were really hard. I really hope I’ll make it through the next set of hard days…
Next to all this I passed the 2000k mark somewhere today! 18% down, 82% to go 🙂

Crossing the blue Nile

Starts to look like Africa…

Baldr loving the corrugated roads. I’m very happy woth my front suspension 😇

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