Day 5 had us starting on bike from our camp in the desert. The first section was a 33.7km section to the Qasr Al Sarab resort. The top teams set a tough pace and we worked hard to stay with the leading pack, but luck was not on our side, as Jenn’s left pedal fell off during the first sandy section on the road, where everyone had to get off and push. While we were trying to get the cross-threaded pedal back on and realized that this wasn’t going to work, more and more teams passed us and we soon found ourselves in dead-last position. We finally gave up trying to fix it and decided to try and just make it to the resort and get a new bike there. Even with Peter pulling and Paul pushing, Jenn’s right quad did double the work and had her on the verge of cramping. Still, we managed to catch up a little and got some encouraging shout-outs from other teams “I can’t believe we just got passed by a 7-legged team”.

At Qasr Al Sarab, we missed most of the impressive breakfast buffet they had set up for us, as we swapped bikes and got Jenn set up with a new bike for the next section of 55km to Umm Zamul. Even after the short break, 4 days of racing had it’s effect on me and I wasn’t feeling well, so we just settled into a sustainable pace leaving the resort and tried to make up a little time that we lost on the previous section. The combination of a grueling headwind and a massive sandstorm, where our Numas got covered in sand and kept us from going completely blind, slowed us down and had us working in a pack with several other teams. Once the road conditions changed and we started hitting the sandy hike-a-bike sections, the pack got split up and we all realized this section was going to take much longer than expected.

Is that sand or a did he use too much foundation?

With so many sandy sections that had us getting on and off our bikes constantly, it was hard to keep the motivation up… until we saw the best Fata Morgana: a local military friend who handed out sodas. A Pepsi never tasted so good. We only had a few kms left, so pushed on, had a great finish and managed to make it onto the first bus leaving to head to camp at Jebel Hafeet for the last day of competition. Setting up camp on grass was a welcome change to all the sand of the last days and most of us took a bath in a little man made creek. We were all in a great mood sharing stories over an awesome dinner and all excited about the last day of racing the next day.

-Julia