I awoke from an interrupted few hours of sleep, weary and aching from the effort of the previous days. My lungs were full of congestion, but despite the frequent and horrendous sounding cough I had developed, my breathing still felt clear. Well, not exactly clear, but functional at least. This remained an annoyance rather than a big problem, and I chose to believe that it would stay that way.
Packing up once again, washing down some stale bread from the night before with a bottle of coke, it was time to go. It was by far the mildest morning we had experienced on the race, a rare bubble of warm air making the early start a little more palatable.
An immediate turn off the road and onto a sandy, gravelly, trail. The mountains loomed ahead in the darkness, the anticipation of the start of the Colonial Road building. As is always the case, the run-in to the climb was longer than it looked. The ascent itself dominated the horizon so spectacularly that the ground leading up to it seemed insignificant. I could see the blinking lights of other riders who had set off from the house not long ago, some on level ground with me, and others already elevated as they hit the hills.
Now into the fifth day of riding, the fatigue was ever present, but in many ways this made it easier to manage. My baseline for feeling ‘good’ had shifted, and I was into the rhythm of things. I didn’t feel fresh, that would be a pretty impossible thing to achieve, but I still felt strong.
The trail kicked up, rough and ever rising.
To quote the race manual “Many riders thought it was the hardest stretch last year. Well worth the effort though. Try not to be here in the dark to make the most of the views if at all possible!”. I had fallen at the first hurdle, my view consisting of a small patch of light from my headlamp for the duration. I could see a short stretch of rubbly ‘road’ ahead of me, and to the side a plunging void, but aside from that it was a lot of nothingness.
I spent the next few hours steadily climbing upwards, until I got to the first section where the trail had collapsed. There was a vertical drop of around 10-12 feet, rocks strewn throughout the gap, and it was far too wide to cross from the top. I backtracked a few metres, and there was an indistinct, narrow path down into the chasm. It was hard to walk with a bike, steep and loose under foot.
Once inside the expansive trench I couldn’t see a way up; my relatively small field of vision in the dark proving insufficient to illuminate a climbable route. I tried one of the least impossible seeming options, but I decided to abort this attempt when I began slipping back down on the loose rock.
Just as I thought I was never going to get out of this hole I found myself in, a light behind me lit the pit. The familiar face of Charles walked down the path towards me, I guessed at a left turn and him at a right. I hit a dead end, while he began clambering upwards. I turned and followed, the trail so steep that it was only just walkable with a heavy bike in tow. Changing tactics and using it as a sort of crutch to balance on, I eventually dragged myself out.
The first of two of these missing sections of trail, the second proved a little easier navigationally, although no less painful.
Reaching the top of the Colonial Road, the sun had finally emerged from behind the hills, and the view was breath-taking. I stopped for a minute, basking in the morning sun, and looking out at the stunning landscape. It was completely silent, nobody in sight, and I felt the incredible gratitude that comes with moments like this on the bike. I took it all in, smiled, and began sweeping down the hillside.
Having set off at around 3am, with very little fuel on board, I finally hit the next bit of civilisation at 9:30am. Rolling down the luxuriously smooth road into town, eying up cafes as I went, I spotted a few bikes leaning up against the pavement. This was clearly the place to be, so I added mine to the line-up.
Tagine, bread, omelette, sweet tea, fizzy drinks, and coffee; the relief of eating a proper meal washed over me once again. With riders leaving and arriving all the time there was a nice feeling about this place; shared rest and refuel being a rare interlude in a challenge as epic as this.
Going inside to pay I spotted bags of croissants and other pastries on the counter, my eyes lighting up at the prospect of some more substantial food on the bike. I ordered two bags to go, much to the waiter’s surprise. Crushing them into my backpack, I already looked forward to eating them later.
Heading off once more, the road continued meandering downwards, a nice treat after the morning we had just endured.
As I had become used to at this point, the leisurely terrain didn’t last long. Back off-road, this would prove to be one of the toughest stretches of the race. I don’t recall it being especially noteworthy for any reason in particular, perhaps I was just going through a low patch, but it was relentless in nature. The climbs that little bit too long, steep, the surface that bit too rough, and the descents never quite provided enough of a chance to recover.
Eventually making my way out of purgatory, I emerged onto an enormous sandy plain. What I had hoped would be a long stretch of downhill was actually kilometres of rolling terrain. My legs weren’t feeling particularly bad, but my head well and truly fell off. I felt unjustifiably angry about the lack of descent, as if that was somehow promised to me for my efforts. The enormous trucks that continuously passed, kicking up huge amounts of dust as they went, were the cherry on top of my annoyance cake.
Ultimately, as it always has to, the road did tip downwards. Twisting and turning through the hairpins, the unhappiness of the last hour disappeared as joy took over once more.
As I stopped in the valley to take off some layers, I felt like my breathing was really laboured for the first time. I still wasn’t too concerned by this, lots of stuff was hurting at this point, and I was sure it would pass. This was, of course, entirely uninformed optimism. I had no real idea what was going on with my lungs, but I had to focus on reaching the next checkpoint regardless.
It was tarmac all the way to CP3 now, with just one admittedly huge climb standing between me and a chance to recover.
Meandering through a palm tree lined vista, an easy stretch in the foothills, I began to really struggle for the first time. I couldn’t breathe, each attempt to fill my lungs with oxygen bringing minimal relief, and a rattling wheeze preventing what little air I had managed to inhale from escaping. I tried to think objectively about the situation, as the realisation of how ill I was finally started to hit me.
Perhaps I was having a panic attack, I thought, after all I wasn’t riding very hard. I stopped to gather myself, and after a few minutes I could breathe slightly more easily again. The fainting feeling dissipated.
But this wasn’t a panic attack, my lungs were just trashed. Neither outcome would have been a good one, but this was definitely the worst of a bad bunch. You really need your respiratory system to be functioning when you ride a bike, especially with four hundred hard kilometres to go.
I climbed back onto my bike, barely moving even on this flat section. It was stunning, in theory, but I had lost the ability to appreciate that. The difficulty of pedalling slowly consumed all of my concentration and mental strength.
The ascent began, an incredibly steep set of hairpins covering a few kilometres, before a more open, shallower couple of hours of climbing kicked in. The very top being a long dragging road, with a killer headwind just to really hamper progress.
It felt desolate, draining, and like I was on a treadmill keeping me from moving forward. I got on the bike, weaving slowly until my breathing became so laboured that I had to stop. I would continue on foot, trudging up the road still barely able to catch my breath. Even once the gradient had levelled out the exertion that came from remounting the bike was too much, fear setting in each time I failed to take a breath.
I lay down on a couple of occasions, willing the ground to just swallow me up. This was unlike anything I’d experienced before, it was all consuming and inescapable.
The sun had set a long time ago, and I continued on into the darkness. This was the hardest I had ever tried to ride my bike, and the slowest I had ever moved in exchange.
As I eventually reached the summit, I could see the silhouettes of other mountains in every direction. This was perhaps the most incredible descent of the route so far. Smooth tarmac, sweeping hairpins, the looming enormity of the landscape was simply stunning. Even at night I could appreciate how beautiful this was, little bubbles of civilisation marked by the glinting lights that pierced the darkness.
I was utterly exhausted, even holding myself up on the bike was hard, but I could still enjoy this section. Nothing would improve how I felt right now, so I focused on taking in the views and having fun flowing down this rapid road.
The final push, a few kilometres of flat, and it was over.
I felt an overwhelming sense of relief as I stepped off the bike at CP3, the inability to breathe on the bike had been a scary one at points over the preceding hours, and for the time being at least I didn’t need to exert myself.
Staggering through the doorway, fellow rider Adam, who I had become friends with in Marrakech before the race began, greeted me. A worried look almost immediately crossed his face, and he later told me he genuinely thought I was about to collapse. I could hear that my breathing was awful, with a loud wheeze and rattle with each forced inhalation, and my chesty cough was now uncontrollable and almost constant. I didn’t sound well, I didn’t feel well, and once I had access to a mirror I could see that I didn’t look well either.
I booked a room for the night, and flopped onto the comfortable sofas in the lobby surrounded by other riders. I ordered more food than ever before: pasta, two pizzas, smoothies, fizzy drinks, salad, bread, and a burger. The hotel staff were lovely, a young man coming over to me continuously to check if I was okay. He wanted to help me with my cough, bringing a saucer of honey and telling me to eat it to help my throat, and asking if he could call for medical help for me. The kindness of strangers once again graced me.
Copious amounts of food consumed, more taken to-go for later, and it was time to get some sleep. Another member of the hotel staff, an elderly man, wanted to show me to my room. Unfortunately for me it was up five flights of steps, and he dropped me after the first. I had to stop to catch my breath multiple times, not a good sign of things to come.
I took my first shower of the race, a rarity in an ultra even after five days, and collapsed into bed.
I made the decision now that I wanted to try and ride tomorrow, maybe things would have improved by then. I wasn’t naïve to the fact that this was incredibly unlikely, but it would be easier to stomach the scratch if I had done everything I could to avoid it. If I tried then I knew I wouldn’t have any regrets.
The only chance I had of this being successful was if I got as much rest as possible now, and didn’t ride in the freezing hours of the morning, so I didn’t bother setting an alarm. This felt really strange, but the race was well and truly gone now, it was all about maximising my odds of making it to the finish at all.
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Molly Weaver.