Weekend away in Laikipia

This past weekend we decided to do the last day of a 3 day mtb race that we’d heard about. It gave us something to do as we have no TV, no furniture and no social life... yet. But the real reason was because we were very keen to ride our bikes. It had been 2 weeks since we last cycled and we were missing our babies! Especially being here, with all the single track and beautiful forests in sight....

So we drove there on Saturday, and did the race on Sunday. It was held in the Laikipia area which is HUGE conservation area north of Mt Kenya. We were told that Nanyuki (the nearest town to the race) was only about 2 hours away.... it was 3. And it turned out the race was seriously in the sticks far beyond Nanyuki.

So it meant an extra 70kms of rocky dirt roads....which included river and donga crossings and plenty of drifting as some rain made our journey even more hectic. Luckily we were in Bayer’s KAK vehicle so it handled the abuse we threw at it.

We had elephants crossing the road in front of us which was pretty exciting. Apparently there were like 7000 elephants in the area.... and it wasn’t completely fenced in either?! During the race there were several marshals on elephant guard.... and they were kept very busy keeping the riders safe from being stampeded.

So after our 5 hour epic journey (!!) we arrived and were shown around camp. A tent was erected for us and we got our bikes ready. We met loads of cool people that evening, lots of guys from Nairobi who we will be doing plenty of riding with in the very near future. We also chatted loads to Kinjah, who is Kenya's top cyclist. He has ridden for many pro teams in Europe and he has won stages at the Epic in SA. He is seriously good and does ALOT for Kenyan cycling... he coaches young riders, raises money for bikes, fixes everyones bikes and he captains the Kenyan national cycling team when they compete abroad. He is an interesting guy.
The camp site was VERY basic. There were 2 toilets.... that had no doors!! And people had set up camp right by them???? So needless to say I did not use them. Yuk. Benedikt almost vomited when he had to go in after one guy (he’d unfortunately seen him wiping!!)

So these are Benedikts words to a friend regarding the actual race:
I guess Sarah will update her blog soon reg. our weekend ... but here a short summary:

Sarah won the Ladies (well out of 3 or 4) and I punctured twice! and didnt have my bomb head with me as Princess S. forgot hers at home .. so I gave her mine as she is anyhow behind me. However I waited looong time to get a bomb head ...actually don’t know where I finished but the first 20km were horrible. I couldn’t warm up etc and battled to stay with the front bunch and then lost them! After 25 kms my legs were warm and I caught almost everybody ... well till I punctured ... and then again! and in total it was only a 45km race and flat.

There were actually about 8 ladies excuse me! :-)
It was a LONG way to drive for such an easy, short, uneventful race. But we accomplished our mission of starting off our cycling network. We met everyone we needed too. I even rode the race with a young dude from cape town.... his sister is on the mtn pro team – Mariska Strauss. And Benedikt found a supplier for rim tape for his 29er would you believe!

Some things we saw over the weekend:


We also saw lots of Masai people... well I assumed they were as they all had massive holes in their ear lobes. But I didn't ask any of them if I could take their photo :-)

And next time I'll take a photo of Mt Kenya! Its pretty BIG. And covered in clouds.


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