Paris Dakar Stage 35 to Marrakech

Stage 35 of 60, day 41 of 71: 129.3 km, 1138m, 4:48, 290 shifts, ave speed 26.9, max speed 69.4

I don’t know what makes me not sleep well sometimes. I woke up around 2am and couldn’t get back to sleep for over two hours. So I didn’t feel my best when we started out riding in the morning, even powered by great banana smoothies. After some rolling, we started a long climb up to the famous Tizi n’Tichka (Col du Tichka or Tichka Pass). While I wasn’t fast, I was consistent and made it to the summit in time to descend with my regular riding buddies.

We went a little way down the Marrakech side and stopped at a spectacular viewpoint. Daniel and I went shopping here, buying some geological souvenirs. He did all the haggling and I reaped the benefits. It was funny how persistent the salesmen were.

Then we blazed down the steep switchbacks, loads of high-speed fun. I was grinning ear-to-ear the whole time. We stopped below in a touristy town for snacks and drinks.

From there it was only a short ride to lunch at 51 km. Ype decided to stay in Télouet to try and heal himself. The tour will come back that way in two days time and hopefully find him cured. Rigo served up a nice lunch, then we continued down. We still had 80 km to go. At first I just didn’t have it in me to keep up with the group. They were hammering and I was not. But at some point they waited and I joined back in, and by then, the headwinds were strong so I was very highly motivated to keep up. We pulled in to a café just after 100 km and boy was I ready for a break. Cold drinks (50/50 mix of Schweps Limon and water) were fantastic. Plus snacks although I couldn’t eat much.

Soon we had to go but it was only about 20 km. Dennis and Wytze were trading off the lead most of the time. Curt measured it with his power meter. It was 130-140 watts to draft behind me in 4th position. He pulled to the side and it was immediately 240. But later when he briefly took the lead, he said it was 300 and the pace definitely slowed. Numbers aside, it’s really great to have a pair of actual Supermen in your team, and they brought us to town.

The route was less than optimal as it went the wrong way against the traffic for quite a while in narrow, dangerous streets. We even tried to correct but ended up just doing the Rob route, but carefully. We got to the hotel and there were many snacks outside, and everybody who had stashed beer brought it out and shared. Today was a harder stage for me than the numbers would indicate. Others said the same.

Daniel and I got a room together and as you would expect in a four star hotel, there’s working internet, hot water and comfortable beds. We used those three things in that order, right away. But Daniel had the presence of mind to first book a reservation for dinner at a Lebanese restaurant. Later, five of us walked over, three who will stay and Dick and Dennis who will fly to Holland together in the morning.

It was a bit of an adventure finding the restaurant and we ended up asking directions at a fancier place. The super nice guy walked us through the labyrinth that is his five star hotel and out the back door saving us a 700m walk. We had a great Lebanese dinner, with several desserts, without alcohol, then taxied home.