Road to the Desert #4

Road to the Desert - Part 4

The rain, the race and the one-eyed Beast

With Andrew Payne 

Yesterday saw the first road league race of the season here in the Western Cape.

The annual Orbit Tour d'Worcester covered 98 km with Trevor and myself competing in
the veteran’s category.

I managed to join an early breakaway after only 8 km with Billy Stelling (Team Robert
Daniel) and the legendary Daniel Schmeisser (Daiken-GU). Stelling dropped off at 25 km
and we extended our lead to forty seconds by the halfway mark.

Daniel and I worked well together, especially on the gravel section were we maintained
our tempo to hold of the main field by about forty seconds.

My recurring hip injury from running prevented me from sprinting, but I was happy with
second place.

Team-mate, Uwe Schmidt finished third so it was a good day for Team New Market
Hotels.

Trevor and I then rode home from Worcester to get 6 hours of riding time for the day. The
Beast has been battling with an eye infection since last week making riding difficult.

The weather in Cap Town has been up and down but I still managed to accumulate 20
hours of riding, with Monday being our hard day.

To summarise, my week looked like this:

Monday: Trevor and I did a speed session around Constantia alternating 10 minutes of
hard effort with 2 minutes of recovery.

Tuesday: 2hr30 min recovery.

Wednesday: Morning: 2hr30min recovery.
Afternoon: 3 hours easy in the afternoon (all on road).

Thursday: rest (rain).

Friday: 2 hours recovery.

Saturday: 2 hours. Rode to the aerial mast in the rain.

Sunday: 6 hours. Race and ride home.