Cameroon Stage 2

Stage 2, UCI Africa Tour 2.2 GP Chantal Biya, Sangmelimar - Yaounde

For results: http://www.cyclingnews.com/protour_oct07.php?id=road/2007/oct07/chantalbiya07/default

For photos: http://webphotos.aol.fr/galleries/jetlagsports@neuf.fr/

(click on pics for larger image)

The room.
The hotel wasn’t bad, but our room was just not the best room in the joint. For one thing it was right at the top of the stairs and right next to the restaurant. It also had 2 bizarre sort of internal windows. These windows were almost like glass Venetian blinds, meaning that both our bedroom and bathroom basically had open wholes to a corridor on one side and the restaurant on the other side. So… as you can imagine, it was noisy to say the least. This room had no air-conditioning, and for some reason had 2 big buckets of water in the bathroom. We never figured out what the buckets of water were for. The water from the taps however was very dirty. After taking a shower the bottom of the bath was covered in sand deposits from the water. To think the locals actually drink that stuff. Anyway, back to our noisy room. To try and drown the noise to get some sleep, and also seeing as there was no Air conditioning, we turned on the big fan that sat in a corner of the room. On the lowest setting the fan made the most horrific noise, on the highest setting you felt like you were standing by a jet engine and the hotel room was about to take off.
Needless to say neither James (my room mate for the night) nor I had a good night’s sleep. I think James got a little more sleep than me, but I only got 3 hours.

Breakfast
On the Menu today were 170km from Sangmelimar (where our hotel was) back to Yaoundé. Breakfast was once again a battle. We started off with plain almost soggy bread (as per usual) with 3 or 4 little hotel tubs of jam between us. After a lot of pushing and insistence from our DS (and lots of general complaining by the other teams) we managed to get served a bunch more soggy bread. Of course there was nothing to put on the bread, but we actually go to a point where we couldn’t eat any more bread. Now whether this was due to us actually being full, or due to us being sick of plain bread is a different matter.

Team meeting
After breaky, it was time for our team meeting. Everyone crowded into our room for the meeting. We had a bit of a joke around with poor Scotty Lyttle, his good ride yesterday meant we were going to have to actually work, and none of us were too keen on that. In fact even Scotty was feeling slack. It has been a long season and we felt we were in Cameroon on holiday. Scotty even almost wished he hadn’t had such a good ride yesterday, as he couldn’t really be arsed today. In fact we all wondered what would happen if it rained. It rains everyday in Cameroon, and we were expecting Scott to have pulled out yesterday when we got drenched in a torrential downpour. Scott said he’d wait and see. This made me feel a lot better, because I have more than a tendency to drop out of rainy races myself.

But at the end of the day there was work to be done, and it had to be done. Scott was obviously our protected man. We wanted to keep him in the white jersey and try to keep his 3rd place overall. James was assigned to Scott’s side and was to stay with him at all times, keep him out of the wind etc etc. The rest of us had to cover attacks and make sure we had someone in every move. We all knew a break would go up the road early on, and we had to have someone in it. To be honest we weren’t too keen on this. We were feeling pretty rough from yesterday, maybe because of the traveling before hand, the heat, who knows. Whatever we would obviously cover all the moves, and make sure we had someone up the road when it came to it. Although not super motivated in the hotel room, once on the road and turning the pedals everything changes. Then whoever was still in the peloton was to take care of Scott in the early stages, then make sure he stayed up front and in contention once the gloves came off and all hell broke loose nearer the finish.

The Race
After the meeting it was time to get changed, pack our bags and get out there for some racing. None of us could really be bothered to warm-up. So after riding around for a while finding a spot to pee, we just waited for everything to unfold. Signing the start sheet was maybe a little more interesting than yesterday. Music and dancing animated the center of town, and the TV crews were out in force today. Even though the start was in the same town as all the hotels, we still managed a good 30+ minute delay… why you may ask? Well… just because that’s the way it goes. :-)

And finally we were off. Things started fast from the gun, attack after attack after attack. We were looking at eachother thinking, “when is it going to stop”. I think it is safe to say we warmed up pretty quick. Especially as there were nothing but hills from the gun. Literally! The first hill started about 200 meters after the start line. Luckily Richard was chomping at the bit to go, and after a few unsuccessful breakaway attempts that contained either myself or Scott Chalmers, we were very happy to see Richard in the move that actually did get away. Finally we could relax, sit in and shoot the shit for a few hours. Eat, tell jokes, talk to some of the other guys in the peloton, find out a little about where they come from and generally dick around… (all the while making sure Scotty was well taken care of of course.) And frankly that’s what happened. We had a good day out in the sunshine. Scotty was nice and safe hanging out at the back of the peloton along with the yellow jersey, taking it easy. We were having so much fun it wasn’t long before some of the other teams came up to ask us where the hell we were from. They knew we were a French team, but couldn’t help but notice us pissing our selves laughing in English. Obviously with all the Germans and Dutch in the peloton, English was the common language. Scotty spent half his time barking joke orders at us, and the other half throwing water bottles to the spectators and watching the flurry of people go chasing after them.

Sadly all this fun and games couldn’t go on all day, and it wasn’t long before the gap to the break started to come down. It was time to get back to work. Things were about to heat up up front as it wouldn’t be long before people starting attacking and trying to bridge up to the breakaway, in the hope of either getting another group going, or of staying away solo. And that is exactly what happened. AVC Aix Haribo and Stephane Bonsergent had quite a few digs. They were the main ones we were to keep an eye on, along with 2 of the Unibet guys as they were 1) close to Scotty on GC, and 2) bloody strong. I seemed to find myself on the same side of the road as Bonsergeant and the Aix boys most of the time, and I had the dubiously fun job of following them every time they went up the road. Luckily my instructions were to just sit on them, but believe it or not that was hard enough in itself.

Then the rain came down.. Torrential rain, hideous stuff that totally blocks your vision, the sand, dust and dirt from the roads and the rain was so intense you couldn’t see a thing! By this stage things were really getting crazy and fast and pace high to say the least. We had caught the break by now and it was getting faster and faster. The approach to Yaoundé was very hilly, and it wasn’t long before the peloton split on a climb. I was happy to make it over the hill in the first group. I went near the front as quickly as I could to help Scott as much as poss, and to let him know that it was down to just 3 of us from the team. Himself, James, and me.
Sadly I got popped over a GPM that was bang on 5km to go. I struggled for a bit and hoped to get back on, but I was in the hurt box big time.
Up front 1 rider was away solo, and despite a phenomenal pace he somehow stayed away. Stephane Bonsergent took the bunch sprint and Scotty finished 7th with James in 10th. So we kept both the white jersey and Scotty’s 3rd place overall. All in all another very good day.

As for me I rode the last 5km alone. By now the rain had stopped and the roads dried out VERY quickly. The roads were nice and very large as I worked my way though Yaoundé towards the finish. What I could not get over though was the size of the crowds. For the last 5 kilometers the crowds for 4 or 5 deep ALL the way along BOTH sides of the road. Phenomenal!!!
I crossed the line alone in 35th place, and was pretty darn spent! I wondered what the impoverished locals thought of us getting off our bikes and having everything done for us. We must have looked like kings to them. Someone took our bike off us, someone took our helmets and glasses off, washed our faces etc etc. The local kids were even happy to get our empty water bottles. Not the cycling bottles, just normal bottled water bottles.

As we got cleaned up and had something to eat, a guy came over and did a live radio interview with a few of us, and before you knew it we were off to rejoin our hotel. Although the roads had dried we were still soaking wet and pretty buggered, so we were keen to get back to the hotel. We rode the 2 or 3 km through town to our trusty hotel which was just what we needed. 3more km of steep hills. :-)