I awoke at around 11.00 pm feeling very tired and a little disorientated having only managed around 4 hours sleep. The lateness of the hour combined with the desolation of our location (Gas n Go station at TS46) and the minimal amount of external lighting made all of us a bit subdued. We busied ourselves getting everything ready and then Jon and the crew appeared; Jon riding Cozza’s bike as his had punctured within minutes of our rendezvous. The first 15 miles of my first leg were very lumpy as we were now extremely close to the steep climbs of the Appalacians. However, the last 5 miles of that first leg were great as I was rewarded with a lovely descent down a 9% gradient. As I handed over to Tom, our crew (Jess and Hayley) were getting extremely worried about the fuel situation in the SUV. I did my best to reassure them that we would be OK (I was feeling quite philosophical by this point), but the situation wasn’t helped by the fact that it was around 1:00 am and the first few gas stations that we passed were all closed. In the end, as we entered the town of Keyser (WV) our luck changed and we paused briefly to refuel. As is often the case, in the next few miles we passed several gas stations, all of which were open.

Shortly after starting my second leg of the stage the crew misdirected me onto the interstate (I 68). It was an easy mistake to make and I felt it reflected the general fatigue in the team by this point. After about 10 minutes of riding, they signalled me to pull over and we drove back to the point of our transgression. Even then, it took a few minutes to reorient ourselves. All in all, the error cost us about 30 minutes. The next few miles, apart from one more very minor misdirection, passed by pretty uneventfully, but all that was about to change as we had four Appalacian peaks up ahead. Tom took care of the first one over ‘Rocky Gap’ just as daylight was starting to break. I took over at the foot of the descent and firstly climbed ‘Polish Mountain’ followed shortly after by ‘Town Hill’. The altitudes in the Appalacians were much lower than those of the Rockies; however the climbs were generally steeper. Nevertheless, I’d climbed steeper and longer climbs in France and despite being the weakest climber in the team, by now, we all felt that we could tackle anything put in front of us. I remember the climb of ‘Town Hill’ very vividly for the misleading climb that occurred before it. I remember thinking, as I started to descend, ‘that wasn’t as bad as I’d anticipated’ just as the road turned right and rose up in front of me again.

I was switching my climbing style from a few minutes in the saddle to a few ‘dancing on the pedals’, trying to maintain a good tempo and avoiding having to use my smallest (granny) gear ring. However, in the last few hundred yards of the climb the gradient increased to a point where I was glad of that extra gear. The satisfaction of overcoming my last big climb of the race was made even more special by the sight of the sunrise which was directly in front of me as I crested the summit. It would have made a terrific photo.

As I got to the top of ‘Town Hill’ Tom asked if I wanted to enjoy the fruits of my labour and do the descent. I declined his kind offer as I’d ridden hard expecting to make the change at the summit. I remember watching Tom as he tackled the descent and then started to climb ‘Sideling Hill’, but then, for the first time in the race, I fell asleep in the back of the SUV. Indeed, the next thing I remember was waking with a start as Hayley asked if I was ready for the next changeover. ‘Yes’ I replied, as I tried to gather my thoughts and get all my gear together. Fortunately, we didn’t have much further to go and so we broke the final section into two half-hour stints. We rendezvoused with the rest of the team at around 7:30 am, just before entering Pennsylvania for the second time. We wished Jon and Coz good luck for their final stint of the race (we were now only about 170 miles from the finish) and we quickly put the bikes in the RV. I remember going straight to bed and hearing Mike say ‘come on, let’s get going’. However, as I lay there waiting to hear the engine start, nothing happened. Next, I heard Mike talking to someone outside, telling them that our battery was dead. It seems that Mike had inadvertently left the lights on all night; another sign of the fatigue within the team. I was more than a little worried, particularly as our next stage was to be the final one of the race. However, I was too tired to get involved (sorry Mike), trusting that Mike would somehow resolve the situation. In the end, Mike, after flagging down several passing motorists, all of whom tried their best to help, managed to find one guy who had a portable ‘jump start’ device and we were finally on our way again (phew!).