Stage 2 and Ray is still suffering from the stomach issues that plagued him yesterday. We decided to take it really easy today and hope that we could nurse his belly through the 119km.

Not racing hard has really let us look around and take the scenery in. Robertson is a beautiful area and the route today took us through some truly lovely parts of it.

Ray may be sick but that didn’t mean we couldn’t have a bit of fun today. We chased each other down some gentle, rolling singletrack into McGregor this morning, eating each other’s dust and generally getting very dirty (looking forward to the Hansgrohe ShowerZone later.)

Passing through McGregor was a real hoot. It’s like they shut down the town for a day and told everybody to line the streets and cheer. And sell hotdogs. And boerewors rolls. And koeksusters. (Is that considered outside assistance?)

From McGregor we swooped up and down district roads and through some fun sections of nature reserves.

We were taking it easy (we promise doctor) but Ray was taking strain so he set the pace for the last 40 kays. A little lapse in concentration at 5kms from the end saw him launch skywards, a superhero move fitting of the lycra clad, that saw him recover from a 45km/h front-wheeled washout in style.

But our day wasn’t over. We arrived and realised that we needed to get Ray’s stomach sorted pronto and so we dropped the bikes and checked him into the Medi-Clinic hall. They plugged him into a drip and he fell asleep.

On the plus side, we did make back about 100 places today, taking it easy. Let’s hope we can hang onto them tomorrow.