Panorama Tour - Stage 3

Panorama - Stage 3
Last of the mountain stages.. However, one always tries to keep the best for last, and the organisers at the Panorama have certainly outdone themselves.. Two mountain climbs back to back.. Spitskop in reverse and then right after that the foot of Long-Tom pass. Then a hilly descent to Brondal, and three final up-hills.. Well, with my good climbing skills and Carlos on form we were hoping to do much better on this day after the disastrous day 2. Our legs had acclimatised to the mountains and were keeping the rhythm up the steel mountain sides. Still in group D at the start, we managed to get there early enough and move to the front of the line. Music. Cyclist one-foot shuffle up the driveway and left down into town. The race is on! The first few km’s out of town were fairly flat, but quickly turned into rolling hills. We managed to work our way into a nice large group with some MTN pro-riders, who at most were warming up their muscles. We were positively straining ours with the steeper and steeper hills, and finally the back-end of Spitskop, the terrifying decent of two days previous, proved a monster of an uphill. The weather threatened, but in the end just turned into a cold fog, as we climbed ever upwards. The water-points were at the top of each mountain, so our race strategy had to change and we kept together. The first climb was the shorter of the two, but Long-Tom proved fatal for us. In a weight shedding exercise the night before we had taken every bit of unnecessary kit off our bikes to make them lighter. We were on a one bottle strategy, with the cold weather meaning little fluid loss through perspiration. Inner tubes?! Two are enough.. Boy, was that just about the worst idea that came to our brains.. At the foot of Long-Tom Carlos has his first flat.. I caught him after the long Spitskop descent and just then he flats, but aces a sub-2 minute tube change, and we’re back on the climb, the few riders who’d managed to pass us are quickly caught on our onslaught up the mountain.. We are feeling good, we are feeling strong. Then, as we near the Nelspruit turn-off.. tyre 2 goes. This change takes a bit longer, as our spirits are sinking.. Again we are passed by the slow climbers.. We’re off and a water-point, a welcome banana and a cool drink behind us, we start descending the snaking mountain road, with the whole Valley below us spread out. The day is grey, but it’s still a beautiful sight, and I am conquering my descending demons finally. But the riders before us have gone and we are alone on the descent. Half way down Carlos stops for a pit-stop and I wave to him.. Catch me on the downhill, methinks. Well, 20 minutes and 50 cyclists later and I am still waiting for him at the bottom. As he turned to his bike after his stop, he saw his rear tyre flat on the ground.. No spare tube. No CO2 canister.. Just wait for the MTN mechanic to hopefully drive past, or some back-marker with a spare tube. All in all our total time-loss due to flats is 26minutes. Our third mountain of the day. No matter, once re-joined we push on with the rolling downhills and take turns pushing the wind. We are riding solo, with most cyclists in front of us or way behind us. We reach the final waterpoint of the day, at the Brondal turnoff and are greeted with Pizza and vodkas! We pass on the vodkas but the pizzas are great. Off we go though, every minute to gain by pushing on. We roll over the last two hills at a strong pace, although our motivation is low now.. We realise just how hopeless our cause is and push on through sheer inertia.. the legs just keep rotating, hardened by the mountain climbs earlier in the day. We trundle on through town, the finish line in sight, and out runs a rabid dog on the road, barking and trying to get under our wheels! One of the riders we’d caught veers off pushing the dog out of our way and we clear through and reach the final up-hill. A slow, painful climb to the top and we cross the line together, shattered by our experience, but glad we made it in the end.