The first few days...

Firstly apologies for not updating this blog earlier. Internet access in Cairo was dodgy and my patience wore short! Managed to get my visa for Sudan with no worries - took most of the entire day hanging around the sudanese embassy though. Had a few days up my sleave so I went out of Cairo to a beautiful place called the white desert. Have some nice pics but as I said before internet access is dodgy so I'm not uploading anything today sorry!!!

Been riding 4 days now and the first two were pretty nasty - I decided to at the last minute register as a racer rather than as an expedition rider as I had originally planned and am now regretting the decision as I spend most of my mornings staring at a wheel in front of me trying to keep up with the racing pack - I managed to stick with them for the first 50km on the first day but after that let myself get dropped. So I'm coming 4th out of the 5 girls that are racing but am seriously considering giving up the race so i can just ride and look up, enjoy the vast desert around me. We've had some good riding so far, the first day was the nastiest - 123km battling headwinds out of Cairo meant we formed pelotons pretty fast working as a team pulling turns out the front. The second day we did 168km from our desert camp to the next desert camp - a long way but beautiful tail winds meant it wasn't as hard as the first day. I let myself get a biut dehydrated that day and was feeling very tired after 100kms. Today and yesterday we have been feeling spoilt because we did 133km, then today only 100km with more beautiful tailwinds so easy riding. We have police escorts when we ride and they tend to enjoy following packs of girls - don't think many egyptian women go around wearing lycra! Today I rode most of my day alone but still picked up a police car who followed me maybe 40km of my day!

I'm in a town at the moment called Safaga, and it's the first time in 4 days since I've had a shower so I'm feeling nice and fresh again.

They feed us really well - the chef on tour can cook well. Breakfast is porridge or breads and spreads or both plus fruit. Lunch is some kind of meat/eggs/tuna (source of protein) plus bread. When we reach camp we get some nice salty high protein soup to help keep the fluids up. Dinner is carb rich and protein rich - rice/pasta/couscous and some kind of meat and veggies with lots of spices to make it nice and tasty. In addition to this we can fill up water bottles with energy drink and we get a box of 20 energy bars to last us 10 days.

I'm having a great time anyway - enjoying the sealed flat roads of Egypt. I'm not surprising a little sore but nothing too terrible - quads are aching slightly but that's not as bad as the pain at the base of my neck. Only mildly saddle sore at this stage and hoping it stays this way - there's so much sand around and it gets everywhere - the last place you need sand is inside your cycling knicks!!!

Anyhow - only 2 more days until its time for a rest day and one of those days is meant to be the hardest Egypt day so I'm looking forward to getting that one out of the way!!!

Hope this message finds all of you well - I lost my phone in the hotel in Cairo sorry Mum & Dad - they have found it and I might be getting it back fingers crossed - there is advantages in having a phone with a massive crack down the screen!!!