Last Day

Last Day

This is it the longest short trip I have been on. The last day sneaks up on most of us. From a race standpoint – we have been in the lead wire to wire so far. This has allowed me to be closer to the action than in almost any other race. The guys have raced hard and smart. The mechanic and soigner have been great keeping everything running smoothly. One last stage and most racers are looking tired. The flurry of attacks that were going on earlier in the week have trailed off. Gabon’s entire team has been eliminated on time-cuts. Teams are running out of supplies and coming to us for help. Only the Euros and TT1 throw away our bottles – every other team gives a bottle back when they take them and most squads are actually using 2010 issue TT1 bottles. We will probably leave behind 100 more this time too. Our hope is that every team today will be tired enough that we can just ride wheels to the finish.

Today I was back in the team car for the final stage – it’s often like the co-pilot in a rally car. Keeping track of the race, looking up rider numbers, there are things to do to help the process which I like. From the beginning the race moves at a sane pace and although there was a lot of terrain change this keeps until 15 K to go when a Rwandan rider takes a flier. In the 3 years of this event no Rwandan has ever won a stage so this poor guy had a lot on his shoulders. He timed his break perfectly and got out as far as 37 seconds before the time started coming down. In the car there was a nervous silence, anything could happen; a flat, a crash, a goat on the course so as the K ticked down we kept waiting and hoping. With 1 K to go Kiel went for it. As the yellow jersey wearer he wasn’t just going to coast in. The Rwandan won but only by 50 meters over Kiel but to the untrained eye it was great for Rwanda. They won a stage and beat the yellow jersey. The streets were packed the last few K so the noise was great and the Rwandan people were thrilled. Kiel was first and Joey was second overall but on the final day a Rwandan won the KOM jersey, the stage jersey, and best overall team. It was a huge day for cycling in their country and certainly one they can build on. Kiel and Joey also won two motorcycles for their stage wins which they are donating to the Rwandan Diabetes Foundation. Alex Bowden was the one diabetic racer on the squad and he finished this year over 2 hours ahead of his finishing place last year showing continued development for him. We would have popped champagne if we could find any, instead it was large bottles of Mutzig (Budweiser of Rwanda) We thought we had brought a strong squad but the cycling gods smiled on us as well this year.

The other group that came with us rode every stage ahead of the race and did at least seven clinic visits. They had the opportunity to interact, educate, and be educated by Rwandans with diabetes. Money and resources are so limited in Rwanda that this will continue to be an uphill battle but through the Rwandan Diabetes Foundation they have targeted and enrolled 680 children with type 1 diabetes who are guaranteed access to diabetes medication and testing supplies. A few years ago these children most likely would have died from this disease and now due to a very charismatic leader of their diabetes foundation and the contacts with TT1 there is hope for them. This week we also set up diabetes stations at every finish so we could test anyone who wanted to know if they have diabetes. This part of the trip was a great success.

From my standpoint, I really wasn’t terribly useful in my opinion. We lost 2 riders from the team but there wasn’t much I could do on either. About half the people in the group had some sort of intestinal issue but having seen them all, I had the worst version of any of them. It’s good in many respects not to be needed in my role, I just feel like I’m taking up space though at times.

As I sit in the Brussels Airport at a Starbucks writing the last entry and reflecting, I feel the trip was a great success. The team reached goals on multiple levels so I hope the sponsors are very happy with the work that Phil is doing. Rwanda was a beautifully lush country that was far more developed than I had imagined. The people were fantastic – friendly and eager to show their country. They were understandably frustrated that all the outside world knows of them is the genocide and not the amazing 16 years that have followed. Would I go back, I’m not sure on that at this point, I’ll have to think on that a little more when I’m not so tired.

Murakozie (Rwandan for thank you) for reading.

Stage 7 Hangin' with the Doctor

Stage 7 We weren't too sure how today would go. Plenty of climbing but lots of tired legs as well. As usual there were tons of hills so we expected folks to try to get away. About 10 k in Alex gets a flat which was horrible timing as the speed was starting to kick up a bit. He had to spend the next 25 minutes chasing back on. Jack, being the resourceful director that he is told our photographer on his motorbike to go back and "take some close-ups" so he motor paced him for a few K until the refs figured out what was going on. He fought like heck but finally caught on. Then it got crazy for me. An Ethiopian rider crashed and since I was in the medical car again we stopped. It was quite the scene. There was our car, the ambulance, the other medical car with lots of shouting and screaming. It was 180 from how I like to do things. Despite all these vehicles we still ended up using mostly the medical stuff out of my fanny pack which cracked me up. Dr Albert was really wanting this guy to have a broken wrist I think. He was eager to get an X-ray so we left the race which was odd protocol. Normally the ambulance leaves but the race doc stays with the race. Anyhow this gave me the chance to visit a hospital though. The X-ray machine was probably as old as me but did the trick and no fracture. At this point the racers were only 10 k out so no real need to go back and we got lucky no one else got hurt. It certainly made me realize that although Albert was a nice guy, his form of medicine and how I want my riders treated is a bit different. We stayed in yellow again and the guys were healthy so all is good there. We were back to another hotel on Lake Kivu and whereas our first place at the lake was tranquil, this one was more of a party spot. We were told we have a nightclub at our place as well if we were interested. The furnishings were a bit rough but we did have hot water, at this point I take most things on a scale and hot water and recognizable food are 2 of the biggest items.

I met a very nice guy named Aimable. He was working this week for the organization and helped with stage timing. He was 10 when the genocide occurred. Like many of his age, he lost a large number of family members. It is interesting looking around all week and I have noticed there are very few people that appear to be between 40 and 60. Aimable graduates next week with his degree in PE and is excited to start teaching. Asking him about what was the hardest part of his studies and he said swimming. In the genocide he lived on a lake and people would try to escape by swimming only to have people go out in boats to kill them. He was able to get over the swimming but only in pools, he still can not swim in open water. I gave him a few of my TT1 shirts and some sunglasses for graduation. He has always been a big smile and friendly all week so I wish him well.

Thanksgiving Stage

Stage 6 Happy Thanksgiving
Today was going to be the easy day. It’s not unusual in the race to have a short stage midway through. Today was only 70 K and not much significant elevation. A break should get up the road and we can rest. Unfortunately at 1 AM though, Will came to the door feeling horrible. He had the stomach bug and there was not much I was going to be able to do. I tried a few things but Will just looked horrible in the morning so we pulled him before anything worse could happen to him. A funny part though was when he came to the door at 1 AM, the first thing he said was “ I feel horrible” quickly followed by “Wait, you guys are sharing a bed?” Yep…

Because of Will not riding, he took my spot in the team car and I had to go find a ride. I hooked up with the Doctor for the race, Dr. Albert. This was pretty cool. Apparently in Rwanda med school it is 6 years and they all come out trained in general practice. He is now 2 years into his general surgery training and 2 more to go and then he wants to do orthopedics which is 2 years. All of his training is here in Rwanda and he seemed to one smart dude. His training is obviously very Western based. He tells me that Rwandan health care is sort of run like a co-op. You pay 3100 francs ($5.00) per year and you are given a government insurance card. If you get sick in your village you present to the local clinic where they determine what else you need. The clinics are run by nurses and doctors come at least 3 days a week. If the issue is complex they may need to take you to the hospital and all provinces are required to have at least 5 ambulances per province. Dr. Albert was quite proud of their system and it sounds far superior to surrounding countries where tribal bush medicine is still mainly practiced. I asked him how these same medical beliefs had been removed here and it sounds like there was a very robust education program in the past 10 years reaching out to the countryside to teach them that “witching” was not medicine. There still are pockets where witching is practiced but traditional medicine is much more accepted here which may be why our diabetes talks are so well received.

The stage was short and uneventful and finished in a town that seems the least developed of any we have seen so far, however we are staying at a pretty nice hotel. It’s about 2 K away from town and in a compound with an armed guard but it’s all run by nuns. As with any good nun establishment it has a nice bar within the compound and the food is quite good. We all get own rooms and each shower has a hot water heater above the shower you have to plug in a little ahead of time. Our photographer, John, described the furnishings as “1985 Ohio Motel” and as I have a point of reference on this, I think he is pretty close – lots of light tans fluorescent lights and a tiny TV. Again the people are very helpful and friendly but it’s been raining pretty hard and the town itself was sketchy so I think I am going to celebrate Thanksgiving at the nun encampment. Happy Thanksgiving to all of you back home.

Stage 5

Stage 5
I really have no idea what day it is anymore. After the race gets going everything simply becomes stage numbers and the rest of the world sort of ceases to exist. This is further impacted by the fact that we are off the grid here and can’t get any internet so we really are in our own little world. Our hotel near the Congo was very interesting. From the outside it looked like some nice little place you might see at the Outer Banks, and even the inside looked nice. Someone had spent a lot of money to get nice materials however the assembly was horrible. Most fixtures did not work, electrical outltets did not work, TV’s did not work, toilets flooded and there was no hot water. This made for an interesting evening. This was also the first room without a mosquito net. There was this cozzing arounstant high pitched buzzing around my head all night long followed by the occasional “I took my malaria med tonight, right?!” In the morning though, it was business as usual.

Stage 5 was going to be a hard one. A 25 K climb right from the gun and lots of hard climbs and technical descents. Racing here has also been a bit unorthodox as the African teams are not highly schooled in cycling strategy and therefore they try some crazy things that make us scratch our head and then figure out if we need to respond or not. Today’s race was more chess with Kiel getting up the road with 2 South Africans an Ethiopian and a Rwandan. They made their break on a downhill and got up to 3 minutes and then the negotiating started. We were going back and forth with the South African squad trying to explain that we would work with them and they could move their riders up to second and third on GC however their team director wasn’t interested so Keil rode tempo to the end and buried them for the stage win. Joey rolled through a couple of minutes later and stayed in yellow with Keil now moving to second. 5 wins in 5 stages. Not bad considering we only had 2 wins all year long as a team before this.

The hotel was a real adventure. Very nice people but a light bulb from the ceiling, one bed, no running water on the top floor- pressure couldn’t get it up there. Door handles had been removed and the doors themselves were paper thin however the walls were 12” thick concrete. 2 amusing items – Jack and I would get to share a bed and the toilet faced a floor to ceiling window 3 feet away that would open from the 6th floor overlooking the entire city. It was quite a view and others from the team would visit us just to use the toilet. While in there at one point I hear Jack exclaim “My People!” I’m not sure who looked up but it was pretty funny. Dinner was ok 2 Guinness and an orange but fortunately had scored Nutella and crackers earlier in the day so it certainly wasn’t the most nutritious meal but I won’t get scurvy.

My med count is dwindling – people are loving the pepto and I have been giving it out like candy. I have gone through 60 in 5 days. Basically almost everyone has had some stomach issues to this point. I had to go to a Rwandan pharmacy to try to find more. It’s very much like a European one here you have ask the pharmacist what you want and they help you out. I asked for “pink tablets to aid digestion” and bam, they had some. Looks like it might just be and antacid but I will go with what I can get. I have given out a bunch of ibuprofen, some cipro, phenergan, Benadryl… I don’t leave the room anymore without carrying my bag of meds as invariably I will see someone who will ask me for something and I have to return to the room.

Chess and Car Crashes

Stage 4 - Chess
Today is the day we are to leave Kigali and head out to see other parts of Rwanda. 155 K with tons of climbing. The first 20 k in fact are almost all uphill and the Ethtopian team sends all 6 of their riders to the front and drills it. These guys just kill themselves for the first 50 K and do a great job of splitting the field but also do a great job of blowing themselves up. Like stages from a rocket they fire and then come off the back. This would work fine except they were down to their last person with 50 K to go. This blistering attack served to separate Kiel from Will and Joey who would normally look out for him in the hills. At one point he was with 5 guys from Rwanda and the last Ethiopian and this was not good, the Rwandans began attacking him and 2 Rwandans got up the road. Well crap, we tried seeing if anyone else would help but it quickly became apparent it was us against Africa. Kiel slowed it down a bit and allowed Joey and Will and their group to catch back on. Once they were back in the speed started to pick up some but then the African teams would attack, we would catch them and everything would slow way down so the Rwandans were up to 3:30 up the road and were in the yellow jersey if the stage ended then. Joey who is 6”2” 175 and looks huge next to most the Africans and they don’t realize how fast he can be, so he decided to try something. The last 40 K was mostly downhill and after one of these frustrating African attacks Joey just drilled it and the next thing he was 30 seconds up the road. Joey started the day in 5th place only 30 seconds behind Keil so this wasn’t a bad move and he can fly going downhill. I the last 20 K he pulled back the two Rwandan teammates and put another 45 seconds into them to win solo. We kept the yellow but it landed on Joeys back. Boy did it feel good. The African teams had been playing pretty smart as a group to beat up on us so to be able to keep yellow was awesome and shows we aren’t just a one trick pony. The only downside today was that Ty dropped out. We were up the road supporting the leaders and Ty was a few minutes back when he got a flat. There was no support vehicle but the Belgian squad gave him a wheel. Unfortunately at this point though he was over 5 minutes down on the back of the race. He tried for 40 K to catch back on but to no avail and abandoned.

Tonight we are staying on a beautiful lake right on the border with Congo, literally we can see the border 100 meters up the road from our place. It’s beautiful although the food is still a little hard to identify. It was also an amazingly beautiful ride through the countryside as well. The sides of the road were packed with people and some great t-shirts. A UNC and Clemson t shirt almost side by side on some kids and my favorite “It’s better as a blonde” made me laugh as the wearer was far from blonde. The area today passed several volcanos where some of the best coffee beans in the world come from. We also passed through the area where Gorrilas in the Mist was filmed. I have taken a bunch of pics and will post tem when I return.

Today’s fun notes - we crashed the car. Caravan driving is a little crazy. Standard rules of the road don’t apply. There are caravan rules but they mainly cover order of the vehicles. Essentially though the idea is to stay as close as possible to the cyclists which is always easy until you start going down hills. At that point a good cyclist can easily out-pace a car. Back home we have great cars that can be driven hard and hold the road. Here each day is a learning curve about the car. Yesterday the brakes went out partway through. Today we were coming down a twisty turny descent in the rain when the wheels locked up on Jack. Nothing was said we just calmly went off the road down an embankment and into a cluster of trees. Well f*#% this is fine. We literally plowed over these small trees which broke our speed but now how to get back in the race. Paul our mechanic and I jumped out or the car and tried to push but no luck. Then out of nowhere at least 40 Rwandans came out of the hillside. The all jumped in to lift and push our car back onto the road. They then all mobbed us with hands out to be paid. I reached in my pocket while we were scrambling to get back in the car and threw up a bunch of Rwandan francs – making it rain so to speak. We sped off (although not quite as fast) to catch the race. Amazing, we can’t find any obvious damage to the car at this point.
People are also starting to wear on each other as well. The team is tight but the rest of the group is having their issues. They ride the stage route a little earlier in the day and then are supposed to go to local diabetes clinics. They are getting packed houses with people who have diabetes and want to learn more. Interestingly one question they keep getting is whether this is like HIV because it is the only other “blood disease” that white people come to teach them about. However this makes for a very long day. Today they rode 100 hilly miles in the rain and were then supposed to go talk. Things got a bit chippy, not mention that when their blood sugars were getting a bit low themselves they get even more like this. We’ll have to keep an eye on them over the next few days. What they are doing is great but we need for them to keep wanting to do it as well.

The Gamble

Stage 2 and 3 was a gamble for me but for the team it was kicking ass and taking names

Having used the facilities last night more than I have in the past month I was a little nervous to get in the car for a long period of time. The soigner however was looking out for me and put 2 rolls of toilet paper on the dash. Still not terribly reassuring but a nice gesture none the less. Today was a 40k stage in the morning and an 80 k in the afternoon. Yesterday we won every jersey but top Rawandan. The guys are so hungry for wins having had a pretty piss poor season that they wanted to try to keep them all however the DS Jack encouraged them not to look like American assholes and be content with the yellow leaders jersey. Keil Riejnen is our top guy. We had a lot of hopes for him early in the year but he developed some yet uncertain infection in February that caused him to miss his whole season. He's back and really wants to prove himself to management. He's got good legs and a really smart guy as well. In the short event the other riders really protected him and he was able to win stage 2 out of an uphill sprint. We had lunch and 3 hours later we started stage 3. Basically a little extra distance but essentially a return trip to Kigali. Unfortunately at lunch 3 of our riders got their bike computers jacked by kids. Unfortunately for those kids we told race officials who literally kicked several kids asses until we got them back. Although not really looking like a repressed society, because of the genocide and lingering effects there is a very low tolerance for bad behavior. Stage 3 was relatively uneventful. Patrol the front, don't let anything get up the road and then duke it out on the 2 k uphill finish. Keil remains 3 for 3 by winning this as well. The team worked hard for him as well so we kept the yellow jersey and best team as well.

Some Interesting items- I often feel like an animal at a zoo. In fact the whole team does. We are certainly a fascinating site for the Rwandan's. Everything about us seems odd to them. These are an extremely soft-spoken people, almost as if they are afraid? Some of my reading on Rwanda before coming mentioned this was common. Conflict is to be avoided and coexistence encouraged. Almost 1/6 of the population was killed in the genocide and as there was no way to really punish all but the worst offenders the Rwandan people have had to basically forgive their neighbors. Killers and surviving relatives of those they killed still live in the same villages and through the wisdom of their President have been convinced that coexistence is the only way to prosper as a country. This must take some incredible mental gymnastics, but also an amazing ability to repress emotion. It still boggles my mind how they do it but Rwanda seems to be a relatively prosperous as a country. I will be curious tomorrow to see what the countryside is like once we leave Kigali.

I am now sitting in an Italian restaurant next to the team hotel. I have not had anything other than 4 bananas in the past 30 hours and simply couldn't wrap my head around goat at the hotel. I may come back for a second pizza later but I can guarantee that I am going to loose 5-10 pounds here. The food is interesting, but I am having a hard time with 3 times a day.

Prologue The good, the bad, and the ugly

Prologue The good, the bad, and the ugly

Today was the day to get started and the guys were starting to look like a rat in a cage with a snake outside – a bit on the anxious side. The ride today was simply a 4 k time trial, out and back and expected to take 4 ½ minutes. There was a presentation of teams Rwanda, Tanzania, Gabon, Kenya, South Africa along with Belgium, France and US. There were several more teams that cancelled at the last minute and rumor has it, that it was due to drug testing here. I don’t know how true that is as everytime something bad happens in cycling it is blamed on drugs. There are a good number of spectators out and we certainly appear to be the oddity of the day. The Minister of Sport makes it out along with several other dignitaries. Sadly, as soon as we park we are swarmed by kids who are simply begging for anything. About every 5^th child looks up at me and says “I’m hungry, can I have some food.” It’s very conflicting and some of the riders are struggling with this. There is the knowledge that “Yes I can help one but what happens after that.” The swarm of kids goes on all day and by the end you start to feel like a bad person for shooing them away like pigeons.

Finally the race starts, one minute intervals, go as hard as you can. We did not bring time trial specific stuff to the event so we thought we might be at a bit of a disadvantage. I am surprised to see that many of the African riders at least have aero helmets and some are even sporting disc wheels. Fortunatley 4 K is is pretty short though. Our riders seem to be rolling pretty well but it’s hard to know as the announcer is not speaking English. At the end however it turns out that we swept the podium 1, 2, and 3. Talk about a solid start. Nothing helps team morale like a win so the guys were very excited. Some racers on this squad have been going since January and are pretty fried so this certainly gives motivation. Our top rider on GC is Kiel who is an up and coming talent but missed almost all of this year for medical reasons so he is fresh and hungry which helps as well.

Now for the ugly – on the way home from the race I started to rapidly feel like crap. I got back to the hotel and began the process of losing things both ways along with fever and chills. It was a rough night but I am feeling a little better at this time so we’ll see how today goes. That really sucked though, I can’t remember the last time I felt that poorly and I am hopeful that I am the only one this week to get this. Ahh, third world food.

There are 2 stages today. A short one this morning then a 3 hour cool down and a second coming back this afteronoon. I am going to give it a try but its never fun to put toilet paper in your medical bag just in case.