Waking to the sound of warplanes dropping bombs,  in a slight panic I rubbed my eyes to realise we were not a war (phew) it was just my room mate creating some serious decibels with his snoring. I’ve slept with a few snorers (not sexual just to be clear) and will forever be amazed how quickly they seem to nod off. My current room mate could go from wide awake to deep sleep with a window shattering volume of snore within 45 seconds. After  night 1 I realised the real challenge was not the 600km of cycling but the race to fall asleep first…  I lost every time. 
My companies Cycle to the Sahara trip is my favourite.  Just a short flight and it is as if you have landed in another world. Starting in Marakech we leave the bustling city behind and begin or ascent of the highest mountain pass over the Atlas range,  the Tizi n’Tichka. Last year I attempted this pass but had to raise the white flag as temperatures dropped way below freezing and the wind was gusting over 50mph, before we passing through the barrier town of Taddart. 

Now in 2017 and a month later in the year, the weather was calm (ish) clear and without significant snow on the ground. We had just a slight head wind to begin with, as we departed Toufliht, it was on!  Leading a group I wasn’t able to blast off the front but I didn’t mind as we waved at local children on our way up.  Shouts of Bon Voyage and Bon Courage from locals,  clearly thinking we were a little nuts. A few locals even tried to sell us the local geodes as we rode past,  where they expected us to put these rocks in our lycra tops I don’t know.

Onwards and upwards we climbed,  the wind becoming ever so slighlty stronger as the altitude increased. a strong head wind or awesome tailwind depending on whether we had just come  around a left or right hairpin. That was until one hairpin.  A gap in the rock created a funnel affect and I was quite literally blown from one side of the road to the other,  just unclipping in time not to fall. I turned to warn my following group but it was too late,  they too had come around the corner.  Two managed to quickly unclip and walk,  Heather however was first blown on to the wrong side of the road,  then backwards and finally blown to the floor in slow motion unable to unclip from her pedals.  Quickly I ran to stop any traffic approaching from the corner. While the others helped her out of the road. Fortunately she was unhurt.

Moments like these difficult decisions need to be made. To continue or not,  Safety versus Ego. I elected to walk past the windy section,  and make an assessment.  If you have seen the video of the cycle race in capetown which was called off due to the wind,  this 300 metre section was like that. The group wanted to continue.  Making it clear if we experienced a similar freak wind gust we would have to abandon the pass and take the minibus. I instructed our support driver to stay close and behind to stop any traffic if we had a similar incident,  and my group to leave one foot unclipped just in case. We continued I pushed on 20metres ahead coming around the corners first before the group to asses he wind. Fortunately it seemed that one gust was just an anommaly.  There were still strong breezes forcing a 30 degree lean to the right to balance at times but 45 minutes later we summited the Tichka at 2260 metres above sea level and over 1200 metres of vertical ascent. Challenge complete!

Falling off at 5 – 10kph is very different to 30 – 50kph. Somewhat surprisingly more bones seem to break at the lower speeds whereas the higher speeds you roll/bounce far better but do loose much more skin.  However I decided descending with the chance of another freak gust was far too dangerous and so we took the minibus down the mountain and to lunch.Following lunch we had 70km to go,  with a steady tail wing blowing off the southern side of the mountains we averaged 35kph as we came to our first overnight stop in the movie town of Ouarzazate.