Day 2 - Tom Burke to Thabazimbi
Our rest felt way to short and yet another early wake-up call again as we had to be on the road by 5:30 am to miss the midday sun, although in reality with the number of kilometers to cover we were always going to be! We woke up just after 4am to start the day. Not to much fun forcing your breakfast down when tired and then we had to scramble and get back to the main guest house for stretching and packing the vehicle by 5am. It was still dark however the full moon made up for it! We all had to put our lights on our bikes as we started of in the dark, luckily for us the roads was pretty quiet but what an awesome sunrise awaited us!
The morning was warm already and nobody used any form of winter protection. Luckily for us the day started out not as hot as the previous day. Today we crossed the Tropic of the Capricorn and amazingly we had 3 x Capricorns in our midst! We first had to stop for a photo session to always remember this opportunity! We stopped over at Ellisras for a Wimpy burger, more Coke and more water as the heat really helped to deplete our stock!
Fortunately the temperature favoured our 220km ride but by lunch time the temperature had again climbed in to the 40 degree region. Outside Ellisras we had an 8 km drag which wasn‘t bad at all however it tested the riders as the heat and the long distances really challenged some of the participants. The days continuous drag was followed by a decent into Thabazimbi where we had to wait for a journalist before we could continue.
We arrived at our overnight stay at the Ben Alberts Lodge outside of Thabazimbi at around 3pm and met quickly for distribution of the room keys so we could all get back to our rooms to get the washing done! Straight afterwards we met at the pool on the property for some “in pool” stretching to relieve some really sore muscles after approximately 500 kilometers, so stretching is vitally important to reduce the risk of injury.
Once we were done in the pool the group moved up to the physio area to start the next phase of recovery for the day. Spur was the nominated fast food for the evening and everyone managed to throw their burgers and chips down their throat in seconds, all very hungry from the days work. The physios were kept busy for the rest of the evening with the medics attending to the last of the medical work for the day.
It was a late evening but everybody knew there was a little BIT of extra sleep on the morning for the short stage back to Sun City!