Yoh the epic is tough this year. That’s my excuse for not blogging as I said I would try do J For the last few days we’ve been hitting out 100km + days with all but one of them over 2000m of ascent. It’s no walk in the park.

 

The much anticipated long day of stage 3 brought 143km and almost 3km’s of climbing. I’m not going to go on about how long and hard it was but it was really a tough day out on the bike.

 

This was followed up by another hit yesterday. The climb up to Charlies heaven was a beast with 4 false peaks, a real mental challenge. Mother Nature threw us another curve ball with the wind. I didn’t mind it too much; it felt like we were back in BelgiumJ

 

After two 6hr plus days today was another monster. To make matters tougher the heavens opened and we trudged through mud for almost 7 hours. The main thing is we’re safely here and have had relatively little mechanical difficulties so far.

 

It has been awesome being on the Epic again despite how hard it is.

 

The support along the route has increased significantly with farmers coming out and setting up camps in what feels like the like the middle of nowhere and cheering us on. It’s amazing and I can see how this will increase further over the next few years into a Tour de France sort of vibe.

 

The water points and the volunteers manning them have been great once again. I feel like a kid when I arrive at them and zone in on the jelly sweets. Yum! Luckily most of them time they’re out of my reach and I can only get hold of the potatoes J they’re good too though.

 

Chilling at dinner in the evening chatting with friends has been memorable, swapping war stories about how tough each of our days were. It’s all part of what makes this event such an awesome experience and I’ve loved it despite questioning what I was doing out there at times.

 

Its two days to Lourensford, the shorter days are deceptive and there is some serious climbing to be done

 

Ill blog about the race properly next week I promise. Thanks for checking in though.