Wednesday 22 June 2011

Oh dear trouble !!!

We left Vaalbank at 08h30 to get to Romansfontien, we had a problem that the narrative was lost, so we relied on my memory to try and get us across the first 30 km, we had a narrative from that point. We managed the route but had water up to our thighs across the vlei and the 12 km section took us 3 hours arriving at the tar road for 11h30, we sat and had lunch and noticed that the day was slipping away from us. We arrange with the race office to stay at Brosterlea tonight as we were pushing a 160 km day and we did not want to get caught out in the open, so we would have to settle for 100km.

I have been nursing a really bad foot for the past 5 days and I knew that I was in trouble. Tim is getting stronger and I am going slower and am walking at 2km per hour and battling to pedal on the up stroke. I then got us lost, a simple left instead of right turn, dumb mistake. Eventually we were on the right road to Brosterlea, Tim rode on and Jim the owner came out to get me 6km from the cottage, I was finished, my limp has become more profound and the wet and dry of the shoes has irritated all my blisters and the infection has got into my glands. After discussing the matter with Tim and looking at the swelling I decided to withdraw from the race. Tim will go on his own. This is not a decision taken lightly, over 3 years of effort have gone into the race and to get so far and to be laid up by what started as a simple blister seems stupid. Not being able to walk properly will slow us down to a crawl, its time to be sensible, bugger !

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