Day 4

We wake up after a lovely night sleep at the Nadaam camp to let the horses graze. I read my daily note Vance has written in my notebook . One for each day, and I’m not allowed to skip ahead and read them all. I often save them for the “afternoon slog”, but today I read it right away. They’re eerily right on point with exactly where I am mentally each day - down to the way I’m calculating how far I am by percentage, or how I might be far enough in the front of the pack other riders will start taking me seriously. He’s written them weeks ahead of time thinking about where I’ll be and how I’ll be getting on, but it’s like he’s there and written them the day before.

The sky is dark black and it looks like it’s going to rain on us part of the day, which is a welcome relief from the heat. My body continues to feel great with no soreness and I keep waiting for it to go south. I have a medical bag full of the strongest pain killers I could get, and I haven’t needed so much as an Advil yet.

I saddle my little gray with no fuss and we circle the horse line clockwise (for good luck) until 7am then blast off for HS9. We head towards the well marked on the GPS and when we get there it’s an open well with a stick and large black bag attached to the bottom. I get off and muscle up a few bags of water for our horses, though with the wet cool weather the horses don’t want much. I’m already sweating under my rain gear. We roll into HS 9 and see Tyler and Sean heading out. I pick a dark Bay horse and Willemien a leggy Bay. We head out over a mountainous but straightforward-is route. We have the best time and our horses cruise along great. We’re riding close, but not too close, to the boys in a large valley. We have to make our way over and we take one route, they take another. I managed to spot an eagle feather on the way, where I screamed out “feather!” And made a looping 180 in order to retrieve it. I had passed up one earlier that day and immediately regretted it. We feel confident in our nav choice and end up rolling into and out of HS 10 without seeing the boys, we’ve made up time and passed them!

At HS 10 I choose a feisty sorrel. He’s spicy for the herder that gets on and Vet Sarah says she’s going to video me getting on. I ask her not to as I don’t want me eating shit to be the daily instagram post. As I put my foot in the stirrup the herder reached up to ear twitch him. It might have been that, or me mounting that did it, but he reared up, fell flat on his face then jumped up and gave a good few bucks. I stayed on and now wished Sarah had videoed it, as it was my only “rodeo” of the whole race, and not much of one at that. The sorrel was amazing and feisty. I named him Crockett (for anyone that knows the Triangle X mules). He’s a prick, but great at his job, and just don’t fuck with him and it will all be fine. We head out over the hills, looking at the navigation with no good clear path to take. It’s mountainous and the only way I see to get through them is winding. Our horses have plenty of go and they’re moving well in the rain. The route is winding and we have black skies threatening to open up on either side. It’s drizzling steadily and I don’t have my rain gear on. There’s no way to dismount this horse to put it on. Willemien tries just to hold him while she’s off her horse and he's having none of it. So be it. Ride in the rain. The distances are so vast that lighting that feels like its right there is 20 miles away. After getting through the mountains we ride along a long valley towards HS 11 which is the first of 4 stations along the Tuul River Valley. Finally we crest a rise and look out to see a beautiful river valley complete with…trees! A novelty here. My spicy sorrel scoots away as I get off and after spooking at Kippling the vet, pulses in at 42. I eat 2 bowls of lovely stir-fry noodles and Willemien comes in saying the horses on the line don’t look great.

It’s getting sunny and hot and we’re preparing for the afternoon slog. We get handed 2 of their best horses and after a second look at the line, don’t see anything better. They plod off from camp and we debate for the first 2km if we should go back and trade them out. We decide there was nothing better and settle in for what will be the worst leg of our whole race. The route is a long a hot sandy road and the horses want to do little more than trot. We’re demoralized by 25% of the way in and we only laugh because we’re together, otherwise I would have bawled from frustration. This is the leg that we compare all future horses to - “How’s your horse? Better than 11!” I can’t even imagine how long it takes us to get to HS 12, but the boys are not far behind us, but not catching us, which means their horses are just as slow as ours.

We come into HS 12 and I am absolutely floored to see members of the leading pack there. How the the hell did we catch them?! Howie and Sam are there and sitting part of a penalty, and others inside the gets doing the same. We have 25 mins left to ride and don’t even fill waters before we leave. Sean comes with us while Tyler stays behind. I can’t now remember why. I grab a little speckled sorrel thing and we gallop off as fast as we can. It’s a populated valley with the river, so as we pass each ger we talk about how likely we are to find another one before 7pm. At 6:50pm we see 3 gers with a horse pen by the river. We book it there and a few teenage age kids come out of the gers. I give them my card asking to stay and they say of course. I hobbled my horse and the teenage girl comes up to help me and unbridles him. It happens so fast I can’t say anything. Shit. Shit. Not good. While he’s a pretty chill dude, I’m not sure we’ll get it back on him. After the boy and girl both try and he keeps spinning out of reach, I give it a go and get him caught back up. There are at least 5 small kids here and people seem to keep appearing. Maggie comes to check the horses & her translator helps convey what’s happening. Maggie lets us know to our complete and utter shock that Chris and Patrick are the only ones ahead of us and they’re also camped out on this leg, only about 10km ahead of us! We had no idea we were making good time or gaining on the pack. Our rides have been conservative without many bolting horses (besides Psycho from Day 3) or prolonged gallops. I’m astonished, and feel a little jump in my stomach

We play ball with the kids, FaceTime with their family in Singapore, and watch the ladies milk the cows. The matriarch there is quite elderly and shows me her family photos in the ger of her 6 daughters. The horses get tied to the outside of the calf pen for the night. We eat and settle down for the night. Grateful for a roof and kind family. Tomorrow is hump day, and even towards the front of the pack, we’ll barely finish in 10 days.