I woke to a clear sky and freshening breezes and now faced some decisions on the road as to how much further I conceivably thought I could go and where go/no-go point would be. I had come nearly 400 km in the last 4 days and still had approximately 480 km to go to Nha Trang 4 days to do it in. This didn’t leave me any safety margin should anything go wrong and still left some pretty big days in front of me, not least of which would be getting back over the mountain range and down to the coast.
Still, spirits buoyed by a good nights sleep and a good feed, Bahń (bun or Baguette) with Chinese sausage and Egg, I set off just after 8 am. The breeze was a cross-tailwind to begin with and a slight downhill tilt was a great way to get the legs moving again. It occurred to me as I rode along that the balance of the ride profile from yesterday’s optimistic plan still had to be covered just to get to Kon Túm. I had covered 1770 ish meters out of 2300+ and was still about 60 km short and while Kon Túm was at a lower elevation than Ngoc Hoi, it wasn’t by much.
Every time the road went down, there was a rise at the other end, sometimes a quite significant rise and as I kept going, that tailwind spun around to firstly become a crosswind then a headwind. It was turning out to be a tough morning and efforts of the previous days were starting to take their toll. Did get some relief at times and recorded some pretty fast stints but each time the road went up it got harder and harder to maintain anything like a good average.
At around the 60 km mark with the outskirts of Kon Túm rolling under my wheels I made the decision to stop and try to get a bus to Nha Trang. I had never worked so hard to go downhill.
482 meters of elevation gain to drop down just over 100, I’m glad I didn’t try to push through las night. It would have ended with me sobbing in the fetal position on the side of the road.
Andrew & The Dr. 