834km (of which 78km was the Special Section)
.....4 hours later, up we all get, for the first bikes to depart at 5am.Patricia is bike number 22, so she left just after 5.30am (in bright sunshine - as the sun does not go down in St Petersburg at this time of year). She was in good spirits as we waved her off into a quiet but bright St Petersburg. Simon Pavey, her team mate in the van Posse had gone earlier (No5) and Colin Askey, also a team mate, followed on a bit later. The cars followed the bikes, revving off into the City. Then the trucks powered up and roared off for their 10,000km adventure.
Then there was peace ..... and no-one around.
This first day involved long road sections and a short but challenging special section. It turned out to be quite eventful for Patricia, although she got to the end safely. Her GPS stopped displaying for a couple of hours, so she could not tell her speed through the villages. When it burst back to life, it informed her she had been breaking speed limits. This may cause penalties to be applied to her time, but I saw none on the provisional results for the day. One tyre also shredded on the bike and so is being changed overnight - I've not found out what happened there yet.
Patricia arrived first on the scene of another rider having fallen off, and rules state she had to wait with him until he was safe and well - which took 5 minutes and lost a bit of time for Patricia.
Patricia finished the eventful day in 43rd position (out of 58 riders).
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