Dear all,

When I wrote in the first blog that I would be unable to send e-mails during the ride it was partly in jest. Little did I know that physical exhaustion would indeed keep me from updating the blog until now.
It has been a tough week.

The ride was the most challenging physical activity I have ever been involved in. Veterans of the ride who have done it for the past 10 years told me that this is the hardest ride Norwood has ever done. One rider told me he has cycled the length of Israel - some 450 miles from the Golan to Eilat - in 5 days, and this was harder. What I had not realised before about cycling is that distance is irrelevant. It´s all about the terrain.100 miles on relatively flat tarmac is a piece of cake, whilst 30 miles of hilly off-roading is a real killer.

The first day was a real shock to the system. Each days riding is divided into four stages with breaks for water and/ or lunch in between. I got a bit excited after the first stage because I completed it reasonably easily and ended up tiring myself out for the rest of the day. It was a struggle to finish but I kept going. It was more difficult than I had expected and I was not quite sure how I was going to get up at 6 am to do exactly the same thing, but it was within the realms of possibility. The second day was not.

Imagine flicking yourself on the head with a spoon.

At first it does not hurt. A bit annoying perhaps, but not painful.

Now imagine you continue flicking yourself for an hour. Your forehead starts to become sore and bruised. Your head starts to ache and throb.

Now imagine you continue doing this for 8 hours straight until your forehead is so tender that each flick of the spoon sends pulsating pains down your spine. Imagine you are not allowed to stop flicking yourself with that spoon until some Brazilian tour guide tells you to. Imagine that you had no idea that flicking yourself with a spoon could be so painful when you signed up for it but that now you have you can´t quit, because you´d be letting down the rest of the group and you sponsors.

This is pretty much what happened to me on the second day of riding, except (look away now ladies) the forehead was my bottom, and the spoon was a seriesof jagged rocks that we had to ride over. For some reason, in Brazil, rather than building proper cobbled streets, they have chosen to smash up rocks and stick the shards into the ground leaving its shap edges petruding ominously. By lunch I was seriously unhappy and wondering what on earth I had signed for. By the the final quarter of the ride I was really woried I was going to do myself permanent damage. Mord and I rode next to each other at snails pace, each meter causing us to literally wince in pain. It was murderous psychologically as well beacause we knew that right behind us was a comfortable minibus, which would happily pick up both us and our bikes and take us to the hotel. We carries on none the less. At times we just burst into laughter because the situation was so ridiculous. I literally had no energy left to expend, I just wanted to stop and crawl up in a ball. But we flipping well did it. I collapsed staright into bed as soon as we got to the hotel and tried to move as little as possible.
Oh yes - that day also happened to be my birthday! (thankyou to everyone for all the texts and e-mails by the way, they really cheered me up).

For me, that was about as hard as it got. After that day I felt I could do pretty much anything, and just got into the routine of waking up and moving my legs in a circular motion until someone said I could go to bed again. In fact, I even started to rather enjoy it. Some of the scenery which we rode through was absolutely breathtaking. We cycled through rainforests, under water falls and into small villages which I would never have seen if I wasn´t on top of a bike. Some of the scenes I saw there were really incredible.

I can not describe the sense of achievement I felt when we finnally cycled on to the Copacabana beach in Rio last friday. The sea and sky were blue, the sun was shining, and everything was good. I pushed myself to a limt I did not realise existed within me. Mord and I are even thinking of doing the ride next year in Kenya, but would definately want to get a group of us going, so have a think guys!

We are now in Rio and have already had a few capers, but I will save them for the next blog.

Hope all of you are well, and thanks again for the birthday messages. Sorry I couldn´t reply to the texts - its really expensive for me to send them from Brazil - but I will reply to e-mails - so keep em coming :)

Look forward to seeing you all soon,

Gidz and Mord