Dragging your tired body out of a bivvy bag and hitting the road is hard enough when you would much rather roll over for a few more hours of sleep, but it turns out it’s much harder to leave a cocoon of blankets and a comfy bed. It’s best just to rip the band aid off, so I got up and out as quickly as possible.
It was 2:30am, the start of a new day.
Down the stairs, into a room now packed with bikes, the hotel owner had stayed up all night looking after them as he had promised, and was waiting to see us off at intervals throughout the night. He poured me a few much appreciated cups of hot, sweet, tea, and with a wave I was out the door.
I had convinced myself that the ride from Taznakht to CP3 was going to be an easy, fast, fairly flat few hours of pedalling. How wrong I was. The road began climbing immediately, a shallow gradient that started off barely noticeable, but gradually began wearing me down. The slight headwind not helping the situation.
The temperature dropped as each metre of altitude was gained, and as the road became increasingly exposed the wind howled a little more. Although it should have been completely dark, the brightness of the moon showed just how isolated the road was.
I stopped to put extra layers on more than once, until I was donning every item of clothing I possessed. The thermometer dipping down to minus ten, my teeth chattering and body shaking. It was painfully cold, and to be honest I was bored with it fairly quickly. I hadn’t felt this way since the race began, even when I’d got sick, but I really wasn’t enjoying myself. The draw of the checkpoint, warm food, a chance to refuel and reset, was the only thing keeping me moving forward.
I zoomed out on my Garmin, and could finally see the turn back onto the rough stuff coming. This road section had felt like purgatory, and this signalled the end of the relentless grind. I would love to say that as soon as I hit the gravel my mood improved, but it didn’t.
The sun should have risen by now, it should have been hitting positive temperatures, but the mountains ahead kept obscuring this promise of light from view. This bothered me more than it should have, and I found myself getting angry at an entirely uncontrollable and unchangeable fact. I was tired, and I was wasting energy I didn’t have.
My legs felt worse than they had at any other point in the race, I kept getting off the bike to walk over terrain that on any other day would be easy. Not eating for almost 24 hours had finally caught up with me, and I grovelled through the early hours to make it to CP2.
As I summited the final climb, all the suffering was suddenly worth it. It was one of the most incredible views I had ever seen, and the sweeping hairpins of the descent triggered the endorphins to start flowing again. A huge smile plastered on my face, I was going to make it.
Stepping off the bike finally I was greeted by familiar faces, and was relieved to walk into an expansive old room filled with riders and volunteers. The smell of freshly cooked tagine filled my nose, and I collapsed onto a chair. Once again we all caught up on each other’s experiences since we last saw each other, and I was relieved to find out that nobody had loved riding this morning. We could laugh about it now it was over, the promise of more enjoyable kilometres to come.
I had been coughing for days at this point, but it was here that it worsened significantly. Concerned looks surrounded me, but I still felt well, aside from the gunk that was sitting in my lungs. It was annoying, it didn’t sound good, but it wasn’t impacting my breathing. Yet.
I ate as much food as I could stomach, filled my bag with biscuits and cake from the pop-up shop, and shoved a couple of cokes in my cargo pockets, before wheeling back out into the day.
Continuing the descent out of the checkpoint, the steepest most extensive period of downhill we’d had up until this point, was the epitome of fun on bikes.
Otherworldly vistas, vibrant communities, the warmth and lushness of the flora in marked contrast to anything we had seen up until this point. Sandy trails, water flowing through narrow rivers on either side of me, children playing in amongst the trees. It felt like I had been transported into some alternate universe, my brain unable to comprehend this new scenery.
We were finally blessed with some real heat, the sun beating down on us from a clear blue sky.
For the entire morning and into the afternoon I enjoyed the stunning, simplicity of the riding. Climbing on smooth gravel tracks that flowed through the valleys. I almost forgot that I was in a race at all.
During this time I had somehow lost sight of the need to plan ahead, and the fact that I had many many hours left before the next opportunity to resupply suddenly hit me. Being so present in the moment was brilliant, but it did leave me a little caught out this time around. I looked at my cheat sheet listing out all the bits of civilisation we were yet to pass through, and I calculated that I had almost 70 kilometres to go before Tagmout, the town I was ultimately aiming for tonight. It was already past 1:30pm, I had little food left, I was unsure things would be open if I arrived too late, so it was time to put my foot on the gas.
I had started to feel really strong and steady again after CP2, further proof that no feeling is final on these things, so I was actually really excited to see how much ground I could cover throughout the afternoon.
After an extended stretch of relatively flat road, head down in the tribars, a village began to come into view. The tarmac seemingly came to an abrupt end as steep hillsides closed in around it. A sharp turn onto gravel, and the track kicked upwards.
Weaving through the houses as it climbed ever higher, the surface becoming increasingly unstable, I focused on pushing on as hard as I could. I had ridden very conservatively up until this point in the race, but the sensation of feeling good and being able to roll through the landscape more quickly flicked a switch for me. I was loving every second of it, my body working with me once again. If I made it in time I would stop to eat and sleep in Tagmout, and that became my finish line for now.
I didn’t look at the clock, it’s fairly irrelevant when you can’t physically go any faster, but as I eventually reached the end of the ascent the sun was beginning to set in the distance. I could see for miles in every direction, over multiple mountain ranges, and there wasn’t another soul in sight. Complete silence, an untouched landscape, how incredibly lucky I was to be there in that moment. Buoyed by the beautiful, ever changing, rays of light dipping behind the horizon, I pedalled with more intensity.
Down an incredible, if somewhat sketchy, descent, and it was into the valley. I knew it was slightly downhill all the way to Tagmout now, and the wind was at my back. I couldn’t have asked for a better scenario.
Although we’d been warned that there was no real track through much of this section, the fact it was now dark worked in my favour for a change. I couldn’t see far enough in any direction to be fooled into taking a different trail, so I just trusted the line on my Garmin 100%, however unlikely it seemed. Engaging front and rear shock, the bike carried me at speed over the rough terrain. I felt like a mere passenger as it floated through ruts and over rocks.
The lights of the buildings in the distance acted as a beacon, and after an abrupt transition back onto the road, it was a rapid few kilometres downhill into Tagmout.
It was around 7:30pm, far earlier than I had imagined I would arrive, and the town was still very much awake. Perhaps a little too awake. The return to civilisation after so long in solitude can be a difficult adjustment at the best of times, but this is the first occasion where I felt really uneasy. I didn’t have a good feeling about being here, people everywhere, shouting, hassling me as I rode passed, and a generally unsettling vibe hit me.
I rode around the centre looking for a hotel, or anywhere I would be comfortable stopping alone to eat, and I found nothing. The stares and shouts of men followed me everywhere I went.
I decided to check the dots, knowing that others were not far ahead and this was the only chance to sleep inside tonight. Happily I could see a cluster of other riders stopped in a building somewhere up ahead, and the feeling of relief washed over me. I like to think I’m an independent person, and it’s unusual for me to be scared in situations like this, but we all have our limits. Right now all I wanted was safety in numbers.
I pedalled up the road a little further to where I thought they should be, but nothing. The lagging of the spot tracker meant I could never quite figure out if I was close to the other dots on the map or not. I would overshoot, turn back, still no sign of anywhere to stop. Houses lining the street, hidden away behind high walls.
Each time I stopped I would be surrounded by people trying to get me to talk to them, grabbing at the bike. I’m sure there was no real threat, but the fatigue and unfamiliarity of the culture and language made it feel that way in the moment. A man came out from a house, shouting at me to turn around, a car pulled up alongside me and hollered through the open window. I wanted to be anywhere but here.*
Just as I had decided to push on through the town, resupply no longer making the list of things I was concerned about, a group of children came running up the road towards me. A little girl tugged at my arm “are you looking for your friends? On bicycles?”, I nodded yes, “follow me” she said. I was led me over to an iron gate in front of a house, this didn’t look like a hotel. It swung open, a man standing on the other side ushered me in.
“Dormir? Manger? Ici?” I wearily asked. He insisted yes.
I was slightly questioning my decision to follow the little girl down a track to a random man’s house when I saw the cycling shoes lined up by the door. She had indeed brought me to my friends on bicycles. Thank you.
It became apparent fairly quickly that this was a family home and not a hotel, but I couldn’t have cared less. The children sat in the kitchen, occasionally popping their heads out to gawp at the strange guests sitting in their living room, Dad laying carpets out on the floor to sleep on and fetching blankets, Mum cooking up massive Tagines for all of us. An incredibly strange interlude in this experience.
I decided to use the fact I was a woman to my advantage, only fair given all the downsides, and got myself a private room. Okay, this is a generous description of a doorless space on the floor surrounded by building supplies of some sort, a mere few metres away from another doorless patch of floor filled with other riders, but it felt like luxury in that moment.
Bags unpacked, shorts off in an attempt to prevent saddle sores, sleep setup deployed with the addition of a fluffy children’s blanket, and it was time for dinner. I wasn’t expecting much, but out came the biggest tagine I had ever seen. We all sat round, scooping large spoonfulls of the delicious dish into our mouths, fresh bread accompanying the home cooked feast.
We paid the equivalent of £11, seemingly the going rate for dinner and a place to sleep, to the man of the house, telling him we would be up and gone before morning, and settled down for a much needed rest.
What a weird end to a weird day. Nobody can ever call ultra racing boring.
*As I have reflected on this situation, everyone was just trying to help me find the other riders, but that is a much easier conclusion to draw in hindsight. Things look a lot different when you’re sitting in the comfort of your own home writing about them then they do when you’re on a street corner at night in an unfamiliar country, exhausted, somewhat lost, and completely alone.
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Molly Weaver.
