We Did It!!!!

After 22 weeks and exactly 1596.55 kilometers of training - the 5th of May 2008 brought us to the Tour Durban 2008. The morning dawned a perfect weather - relatively warm and not a breath of air. We started at 4am to make the race for a 6 am start.
We were a little nervous to start in front of the field but we got into the batch pens anyway and were ready to go when the first puncture hit! Thankfully the start time was delayed and I had enough time to fix the puncture before the start. Then the second puncture hit!!! So we fixed that too but the tandem batch had already started. We joined a later bunch as our time only starts when we rolled over the timing mat. We were finally on the way to realising a big goal.
We were cheered on the way by Carries family who gave up alot of sleep to bear the cold and come and support us along the way - Thank you!!! They take the credit for the photos



After about 10 km the third puncture hit!!!!!! We got off and phoned the mobile repair shop - no answer, so we phoned the command center of hte race and the nice lady said that they would sen the mobile repair guys to find us - we are still waiting!! I patched the tire and pumped it up as best I could and we were on our waay again. About 10 mintues later a passing bunch said to us our back tire was flat!! We pulledi nto a petrol station and were going to pack it in. Both nearly in tears from pure disappointment from not finishing - i took once last look at the infamous back tire to check how flat it was. to my delight it was not flat and just a little soft. I pumped it up a little more and we picked ourselves up psychologically to start again and head off towards our goal.
We then hit the big hill of the day - the M7. Its long but it was not as bad as we thought it would be and waiting at the topas a reward for our efforts was i) more family members supporting us along the way and b) 6 km of downhill back into Durban. We broke our top speed record (previously 84.5 km/h) and reached 87.4 km/h before I had to broke for slow mountain bikers in front of us.
Once at sea level again we had about 60 km to go and neither of us wanted to carry on but were too stubborn to admit it so we headed out to Balito only to return along the same road to finish. This was the toughest part of the race and we slogged hard to get to the turn around point and back to the last water point at 82 km. We stopped and had a strecth and a very nice chat to the man at the water point and were soon on our way.
Once on our way we started counting the kilometers down until we reached the final off ramp where we crossed over the freeway (where our fan club was waiting to cheer us on again) and the final strecth to the finsih.


Carrie got to count the number of black stripes (expansion joints) across the road but this time she could do it by looking at them not by feeling the bumps like normal - we normally have to ride down the left hand side of the road but this time we were in the middle of the road because the road was closed hence no bumps.

We then turned off the freeway and into the finishing straight and across the finish line.
We did it!!!
Time:                    
    Official:                4:55;55
    Our time:            4:25:52
Distance:               103
Max Speed:            87.4
Average speed:    23 km/h