Cycling Tour d'Afrique 2019: 19/01/17, stage 1, Cairo to Porto Sokhna

We started!

I did not sleep to well last night because I awoke every hour to see whether it was already 500. Once it actually was 500 i got out of bed, dressed into my cycle gear and headed downstairs for breakfast. It was quite funny to see everyone dressed up in Lycra :-)

After breakfast I went back up stairs to get my daily bag and dropped it downstairs. After that I got my bike and at 700 the whole group headed out in convoy towards the pyramids. The first meters of cycling in Egypt and as the pyramids are located at a plateau, we also had our initial ascend! Once on top of the plateau we took our pictures with our bikes in front of the pyramids and after that we took a group picture. With this the tour officially kicked of!

After the pictures we descended from the plateau towards the Spynx, where we and our bikes were loaded into a bus to be transported to the outskirts of Cairo. We arrived there at about 1030 and then the staff released us into our new habitat! We followed the highway towards the red sea and after about 30km we had our first tda lunch along the road.

After eating we continued towards the red sea and after reaching the red sea towards Porto Sokhna. We rode a total of 77km, but due to a strong tailwind and a majority of down hill terrain, we reached Porto Sokhna at around 1pm. It was a real nice fast ride, averaging 32km/h and a maximum speed of 50km/h. However tomorrow I really need to take it slower if I want to complete the 150k stage 2.

I really can’t believe we’ve started and that we are now following the route that I’ve stared at at the map for so long! However riding in a group is challenging for me. I hate it when the other riders wait for me and simultaneously I am tempted to keep up with them and ride above my strength. The best thing for me to do is just to pretend that I am alone and keep my own pace...