One rider on Twitter said it was ‘the hardest day of my life so far’ while another described it as the ‘biggest EFI massacre ever.’ (EFI? That’s Every Fucking Inch of the Tour d’Afrique without ever riding the support truck.)
It was an epic epic day… actually, from what I am told it was two giant days of riding in the untested roads approaching and inside Dinder National Park – a new route for us at Tour d’Afrique. These will surely be rides that live deep in the hearts of many riders, and surely for others it was simply two soul shattering, frustrating days.
I am in Khartoum tending to a rider who is on the mend from an earlier fall. The first reports I am getting from the tour suggests that it is an extraordinary and doable route, but it will need another day of riding to make it manageable for next year’s group.
As with years past, it has been our style to test new routes… enroute. We did it in Namibia last year and Ethiopia the previous year… both to great success, but not without hardship for the riders and long days for the staff. The cyclists do become part of our navigational experiments and our forays into lesser known, rarely traveled places.
They don’t all thank us for it.
And, no doubt, we can appreciate why. For many these two days meant the end to their dream of riding EFI, and for others it was a shock to their system that they had not been eased into gently at all. This is the risk we run, and this is the style we like.
To all those cyclists enroute, you have many challenges ahead. But you are all graduates of Dinder National Park school of pain and we salute you for traveling this road with us…
A version of this post can also be found on Tour d’Afrique’s website.
