Trans Mexicana Stage 4

Back online...... After spending the last few days in remote Mexican towns, one of them with just one telephone for the whole town, let alone internet, I am now sitting in Mexico City with my feet high up in the air catching some R & R.

The last 3 days of the TransMexican bike race were full of spectacular crashes, epic climbs and lots of stray dogs along the way to cheer us on.

Stage 4 was a 135 km ride across the Mexican dessert and proved to be an epic adventure as 20 of the 30 competitiors finished after nightfall. Lupillo, Travis and myself pulled away early on in the stage and road strongly until our water bottels became dry in which we then road not so strongly and at one point had to stop for a cry before riding on for a little bit longer to eventually a feed station for 8 gallons of water each. Overall the day was pretty much a full on episode of a looney tunes cartoon show as riders would go in an out of hallucination, some getting dizzy and hiking 1 hr up dead end canyons and others crashing hard (Lupillo) into outcropping rocks and loosing a half pound of flesh. After setting the pace for much of the opening 75 km, Travis Macey would eventually lose contact with Lupillo and myself on one of the long sketchy downhills. We knew wed have to keep up the effort to stay away as Macey an internationally experienced adventure racer is something like the enrgizer bunny and after spending the last week racing across Mexico with him its apparent he doesnt get tired. At km 90 Lupillo put in a strong effort on a steep accent and would gap me by 3 minutes before succumbing to the + 37 c temps and slowing down enough allowing me to pass him and put 5 minutes on him until I became sun fried and crashed into a cacti, flatting my front wheel. After a 5 minute repair i was back on my bike, riding togethar with Lupillo as we headed the last 30 km to the finish were I would gap him by 19 seconds for the stage win. Macey would come in 30 minutes behind, and then Alexy Sokolov (Ukraine) another 45 minutes behind him. After that it was an episode of survior as racers would crawl acroos the line for the the next 7 hrs, well into the Mexican night.