Issue link: http://trailridermagazine.uberflip.com/i/1048523
rocky, endless, ledge. Unless you had some decent trials skills, water and energy, you were going to suf- fer. They should have had a sign that said "watch for falling bikes." I was out of water and hur ng. I'd been running and mountain biking in the mid-day heat to get ready for this, and it was nothing compared with trying to ride that terrain a er four hours and dehydrated. I would ride 10 meters, sit under a tree and rest for a few minutes and repeat. Brutal. Once I made it roughly 500 meters from the finish, I was done, no longer swea ng, no longer thinking clearly, and si ng on the side of a cliff. At that point, one of the club members got me and my bike up to the finish and helped out tremendously. I've never been so thirsty in all of my life. I laid down in the shade at the Forest race finish and guzzled two bo les of water un l I recovered enough to make it back to the pad- dock. I ended up finishing the course in just under five hours. They extended the maximum riding me and I recorded an official finish. Once back to the paddock, a few South African guys who do this stuff all the me put a bo le of water mixed with coke in my camel back and said it would bring me back. Sure enough, it did. They gave me some cri cal advice that when racing in this heat for over five hours, stop o en to get your breath a er the really hard sec ons and get extra water at each checkpoint, even if you have some le . I was definitely learning as I went along. Several of the guys advised they were passing on the Canyon Race on Thursday in order to save themselves for the Mountain Race. My goal in all of this was to make it to the Bronze gate of the Mountain race, so I proceeded to lie in bed all of Thursday to drink water, eat and try to recov- er from being dehydrated. This ended up being the smartest move of the week. The Canyon race was an- other brutal day. So when lining up for the Mountain race, I was feeling back to at least 80 percent, while others were really hur ng. Even though I was a row or two back, this didn't make much of a difference. I packed extra water, food and electrolytes, knowing I had seven hours to make it to my goal. What I did no ce was a bunch of Vet Turkish riders in the back rows way behind me, who had not a ended any of the previous qualifiers. The way the rules work is that if you don't compete in the previous three-day qual- ifiers, you get sorted on the last rows with a crappy star ng posi on. The danger in that comes with less skilled riders holding you up at cri cal sec ons. 28 Trail Rider