Day Five
The day we’d all been dreading. I remember sitting at the Women V Cancer Cycle Kenya meeting in London at the start of last year and listening to one of the speakers telling us about the dreaded hill. We had the option of doing Bronze level 6km (3 miles), Silver level (10 miles) or Gold level (16miles) and instantly I thought “pah, I’m going to do gold no problem.”
That was way back when I was a little naïve possibly even arrogant, hadn’t already done two days of long distance cycling and wasn’t suffering from a sickly stomach (which meant that I was still struggling to eat anything without that awful feeling that I might be seeing it again pretty soon!).
When we woke up that morning (in the dark – the leccy was still being a bit temperamental) and got on the buses for the transfer to Kabarnet, I genuinely started to wonder if I’d even manage to pedal my bike, let alone anything else.
Reaching Kabarnet, we started with a very steep 18km downhill (11mile). By now I was starting to get the hang of plummeting towards the bottom of things at nerve-shreddingly fast speeds and even found myself laughing at one of the locals who tried to amuse her friends by bouncing out into my path shouting “Jambo!” I was yet to pirouette on my handlebars, but hey, I was getting there.
As we started to flatten out though, I started to feel worse again. It was hot, I was exhausted and my legs were in talks with each other about taking strike action. I decided to grab a breather and snap some pictures of the scenery on either side of the road whilst my brain convinced my body that it could work a bit harder.
I’ve got some wicked pictures of termite hills thanks to my pit stops- they’d put our British moles to shame let alone the ants – seriously, some of those mounds were taller than me….then again most things are! (I realise that taking pictures of what was effectively a mound of soil is a bit strange, but I was genuinely fascinated by these wonders of the natural world…..I became David Attenborough!).
Eventually, through stopping and starting, I managed to get to ‘base camp,’ the water stop at the bottom of the hill. Pouring a rehydration sachet (those things are…to quote the late Jade Goody…proper minging!) into my water bottle and taking a deep breath, I convinced myself that I was ready to tackle it and after ten or fifteen minutes, joined the next handful of women to set off to start the climb.
By now (and because I’d dawdled along getting to the bottom of the hill) the heat of the day was pretty much upon us. I started to understand how bacon must feel when it gets dropped into a frying pan – quite uncomfortable!
It was also at this point that my inner voices came into play. That mythological Angel and Devil that sit either side of your head really aren’t all that mythological! In the blue corner I had my Angel telling me to keep going, reminding me of the support I had received from everyone at home and encouraging me to finish what I had started. In the red corner was my Devil. A giant monstrous demon, waving his pitchfork at me, screaming; “Why are you bothering? You aren’t going to finish this, look at the state of you! Johnny Vegas would do a better job walking up this hill with a can of Carling and a fag in his hand. You’re pathetic!”
At this point I was on my own, having slipped behind my group and I started to feel that the Devil was going to win. Thankfully, and I remain eternally grateful for this, as I turned a corner, I stumbled upon Denise and promptly burst into tears for no other reason than I was just bloody knackered! It was the best thing I could have done, as after a bit of a weepy moment, (followed by a conversation with a random passing local) my Angel actually managed to land a drop kick right in the middle of the Devils face, knocking him flying out of my subconscious. We jumped on our bikes with a very “we can do this” attitude and set off again, gradually catching up with some more members of the group. Together we got to Bronze. It was the best feeling in the world when Angela (the rep from Ovarian Cancer) started running towards me shouting that we were there, we had done it!
We all celebrated with a head water and a drink of water!
Now, I quite like a bit of pampering – a massage here and there, a manicure, a facial when I’ve got a bit of spare dosh – but during my time in Kenya I learnt that there is no salon treatment on earth that will beat ‘The Head Water.’ A very simple procedure – tip your head upside down, whilst one of the men from the team very gently pours freezing cold water over your scalp, rubbing the hairline with his fingers- Oh. My. God! There are of course practical benefits of this – freezing cold water poured on your head instantly cools your body temperature down, essential when biking really far up bloody great mountains – but I don’t think that we were entirely all that bothered about that!!! Neither were we bothered when we stood up again looking like we were paying homage to The Joker out of Batman, all wild hair and makeup, it was worth it!
Over our celebratory drink of water, we started to discuss our next move. I was so, so tired and during that long pedal up to Bronze had started to think that maybe I would just finish there, but by now my Angel was pretty pumped. Not only that but the fantastic group of women that I reached Bronze with, were also pretty persuasive. “We could just go to the viewpoint before Silver and see how we get on from there,” one of them suggested. I shrugged- in for a penny, in for a pound.
We set off again, this time as a solid unit waiting for each other (okay, okay, the other ladies waited for me) every time we found a bit of shade. There’s a lot to be said for the power of a group of women. Men tend to think that when we get together all we do is bitch, gossip and moan….this is true….but we also become a force to be reckoned with. All our little Devils suddenly found that we weren’t going to listen to them anymore and vanished in a puff of smoke. The encouragement and support I experienced that day was just phenomenal. We got to the viewpoint just before Silver and cheered. Again, we had done it!
Photos were taken, head washes were ordered and bushes were peed in before we regrouped and asked each other; “So…..where do we go from here then?” Did we take the bus to the lunch stop, or did we get back on our saddles?
There was only ever going to be one answer.
The climb to Silver after the viewpoint was horrifically steep, I mean if I had lay down on the road, I would have been practically standing up. Even the trucks and lorries going up to the top were really struggling to drag themselves up there. I realise it sounds very much like I’m exaggerating, but really, I’m not. There is literally no way to describe ‘The Hill’ to you to make it believable, unless of course you have done it yourself, in which case are you still having nightmares about it or is that just me?!
We persevered though, powering away in our little bubble of determination. There was a slight embarrassing moment when Claude, one of our guides, offered me a digestive biscuit at one of our pit stops on the way up and I burst into tears again – honestly, I’ve never been so emotional as I was on this trip, it was like my body had stored all my hormones up for a year and then released them on that hill. I mean, granted, Digestives aren’t the best biscuits in the world, they certainly don’t match up to say….Custard Creams or Jammy Dodgers, but they’ve never made me cry before!
The heat at this point was unbearable (I think somebody said it was 40 degrees that day) and there was very little shade around. With every push of the pedals you could feel your heart frantically beating blood around your body and if you were unlucky enough to bend your head too close to your armpit…eugh…it wasn’t good!
With every bend in the road, we prayed for the finish line, but with every bend just came…well….another bend! I don’t know what time we actually managed to hit Silver because by that point I could barely remember my own name, but I do remember the sheer pride we all felt for our group, the teary hugs and the manic grins that spread across our faces. I have never achieved anything so physically demanding before in my life and I did it because of the group of ladies I cycled up that bloody hill with. They were so patient and supportive and just generally wonderful!
We didn’t manage Gold because we weren’t allowed to attempt it due to timing restrictions, but I think I speak for us all when I say that we didn’t care. We had achieved something so phenomenal in our minds and as a united group as well, that it really didn’t matter. I take my hat off to the girls that did get there because I honestly don’t know how they did it.
When we got to the lunch stop pretty much everyone else was already there – either they had reached Gold at crazy speeds or had been picked up at various points on the buses – and they all clapped us as we arrived. It was a very proud moment I have to say.
I have to say that the whole group in general were always really supportive throughout the whole trip from the super athletes right down to those who found the experience very tough, we all just sort of kept each other going, clapping and cheering those behind at every stop, congratulating those that made them before we did. There was no competition, no judgement, just this immense pride radiating from everybody that we had done it together.
We ate a hurried lunch as we had to complete the journey to Eldoret before dark and then tentatively climbed back on the bikes and after a “short climb, nothing really to worry about” (Henk!!!) we hit some blissful down hills. Not the sort that gave you a temporary face lift as the wind hit you, but the sort that meant you could pedal and bit and then sit pretty as your bike whizzed along on its own. Total relief for our tired and battered bodies.
Along the way we were accosted by hoards of local children – some tried their luck by smacking a lycra clad butt or two – and eventually we arrived in Eldoret and at our hotel The Hotel Sirikwa. We abandoned our bikes on the turning circle of the car-park and collapsed tired, dirty, sunburnt and proud outside the front lobby, cheering everybody as they arrived and congratulating each other on what had been one of the most physically challenging days most of us had ever faced.
At dinner that night, Ann told us that we were one of the most united groups she had ever seen.
If I hadn’t realised it before, I now knew that I was a part of something very special.
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