The second race of the WP cross-country mountain biking series took place in the Durbanville hills area. It turned out to be a really nice course with just over 200 meters of climbing for each 5.8km lap. The laps consisted of some decent long up hill stretches, some short very steep up hill sections and some nice fast flowing single tracks with switchbacks both up and down.
The race started out extremely fast as usual. It took the first two laps for me to get more familiar with the course. Then I was able to get into a decent rhythm and was really enjoying myself. I was lying in 3rd position in the elite category for the first 4 laps until the two riders in front of me, Renay Goustra and Erik Kleinhans (Mr Price GT) pulled out. I therefore ended up coming 1st out of the elites. I was however, 5th over all as there were 4 U23 riders in front of me. Those U23's really seem to know how to race these cross-country races! I am fairly new to this kind of racing as this is only my third one ever and I think I'm beginning to enjoy them more each time.
There was only one problem with this race. The cross-country races are normally aimed at an optimal total time of 2hrs +/- 10min from the winners to the back of the field. Like the previous XC race I didn't have anyone to keep anything for me in the feed zone, so I had to take everything I was going to need from energy stuff to fluid along with me. I don't find this too much of a problem as I know the race should only last about 2hrs, which isn't very long and I know exactly what I would need to eat and drink during that time. I also don't want to take extra and have to carry anything unnecessary along with me.
So, I'm not sure what the reason was but the organises made the race 8 laps. As it turned out this was one or two laps too many. I ended up bonking half way through the 7th lap (after about 2hrs10min of racing) and still had one and half laps still to go. They ended up being a very long and difficult one and a half laps as I was rather dizzy and had a slower reaction time that resulted in me over shooting quite a few corners, making quite a lot of mistakes and riding off the single track a few times. At least I didn't end up being over taken by anyone else during this time and is something to consider more in the future.
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