On the last day of the (Donkey) Elephant Highway

Heading into large cities I prefer to call off the race day for safety but I wanted to throw something slightly different at our riders to try to shake off the doldrums of long flat riding days.  So on the last day of the (Lack of) Elephant Highway we had a Team Time Trial.  This took the riders from camp to the 20km mark as fast as possible with as much of their team as possible.  I was unsure how the event was going to be received and took a chance and threw all the riders  on to teams.  Some decided that racing just wasn’t for them but the remaining 43 riders took on the challenge of one of the most fun events yet (as race director I might just be a little biased)  To my surprise all (almost) all the teams rode the entire 20km together.  Sheltering some riders from the cross wind, pushing others on the back to keep them in pace.  At the last minute I choose to join team 7 “Hardy’s Angels” and we had a blast. Hardy’s panniers are awesome to draft behind.   Riding so fast with a fully belly of muesli was a bit of a challenge but we even managed to pass team number 6 four km from the finish line.  It was a shock to see that all the riders had stopped at the finish line and waited to cheer all the teams across the line.  With a difficult day of head winds ahead it was a fun way to finish a (boring) difficult section.