Another MTN national marathon

This time we visited the diamond mining town of Cullinan just outside Pretoria. This event was number 5 in the series and number 4 for me. After deciding that this year I would give it a go at these national races as I wanted to compete against the best mountain bike riders in the country I had a fairly decent start to the year with a 14th position at the first race of the series, the Attakwas. The next two races where races much to be forgotten about due to extreme mechanical and bodily failures. However, this time I was able to get in a decent race and result with 12th place.

Most of the top contenders were on the start line, one of who was Kevin Evans (MTN Energade) fresh from competing in the world marathon mountain biking champs in Europe, needing one more victory to take the overall title in the series with two races still to come. As usual in this part of the world it was going to be hot! And I've come here from my every faithful Cape Town winter weather, so I was expecting a little shock to the system later in the day. The racing was fast in the beginning as there was no real climbing so the bunch was trying to tail off the lesser mortals with a rapid pace. This indeed turned out to be successful as we encountered very soft sand that exposed one of the key skills of mountain biking among the riders.

After the flatter sandy areas, the rough, rocky savanna terrain that highveld mountain biking races are renowned for and, which resulted in the complete destruction of my body in the previous race in Clarens, began. I tackled this section of the route feeling strong and riding most of the time with my team mate from Blend Properties, Charles. We managed to drop a few other riders along the way and were within 6min of the leaders at the 65 kilometer feed zone.

Soon after this point we turned to continue with the half marathon route (the ultra marathon consisted of 105km of which 70km was the marathon route and the other 35km was the half marathon route). It was here that I started struggling to hold the pace of Charles, as my back was beginning to hurt from the constant jarring of the rough terrain and I was unable to get the power out of my legs that was needed to drive the peddles. I was then left to fight with my body for the last 30 kilometers, to keep me going to the finish. Fortunately we had built up a solid gap on the other riders behind us and no one passed me during this time. At the finish I crossed the line in 4hr30min and ended up loosing 10min to Charles over those last 30 kilometers where he went on to finish 10th. I was happy with the race, it just would have been nice to have finished strong and in the top 10.

Next time...

Transbaviaans - 230km!!!

230km is a very very long way. That is what the Transbaviaans mountain biking race (from the little karoo dorpie called Willomore through the beautiful but painful Baviaanskloof all the way to the surfing mecca of Jeffrey's Bay) consists of.

Team Blend Properties consisting of Charles, Stuart and myself were all first timers at this race. It was a little daunting knowing that you will be venturing your body into unknown territory as we would be out on the bike for about 9-hours (if all goes to plan)!

The night before consisted of detailed planning. There was a lot to think about for this race unlike most races where you just hop on your bike in the morning and go flat out from the gun. We needed to make sure we had all the supplies necessary from nutrition to tools and spares for each feed zone/check point along the way! Then strategically place these items either on our bikes, in our pockets or the crates supplied by the race organisers that would be taken to each point through the kloof. After everything was sorted, well we hoped, we were able to get to sleep in our small, spooky karoo cottage surrounded only by little karoo bossies in the middle of nowhere!

Race day came. We placed our crates in the truck to be taken into the kloof and after being nice and relaxed before the start we unfortunately had to line up right towards the back of the field. This was obviously not ideal as there was no way of trying to make our way closer towards the front until the gun went off. The madness begins! We had to frantically weave our way through about 600 odd riders before we got to the narrow jeep track about 3km from the start. Hence this was near impossible and we had to do some rough riding through the jeep track to try make up ground. After about 15min of hard effort and risking punctures we had made it into the front bunch and were able to settle down nicely.

With a front bunch consisting of about 10 teams and fast flowing gravel roads the pace was generally high and higher at times similar to a road race for the first 100km with an average speed of about 33km/hr. Just after 100km we entered the first check point and feed zone. Without any form of back up we quickly found our crate and took what we needed. I thought we had done this quickly and efficiently and we were back on our bikes within 2min. This, however, wasn't quick enough compared to the two teams (Supercars and Marsilio Projects) already over a minute up the road who had support vehicles. We chased hard for the next 10km from 105km to 115km when we hit the first big climb. As we started climbing we saw the two leading teams together about 200 meters in front of us. At that moment Stuart started to feel the effects of the hard effort and began to cramp. This made the going through the kloof rather tough as Charles and I took turns in pulling Stuart as we didn't want to stop. We just needed to get through the kloof so that we could recover on the long decent on the other side.

Although we lost ground to the leading team Supercars, we did manage to catch up to Marsilio Projects at the top of Bergplaas. However, the big climb to the top of Bergplaas really killed me as the tough going through the kloof took its toll. It was a long struggle up to the top! When I got to the check point and feed zone at the top I was blown! I was hurting and couldn't think straight as I had to take what I needed from our crate to get me to our next feed zone as well as put my light on my bike. During this time Marsilio Projects whom we had caught up to had another quick stop and were able to get ahead of us again.

At least we knew there was a long downhill to recover until our next check point.

The next check point came at about 176km. This was the first time we saw our back-up driver! A similar scenario occurred here as the previous check point where we had just caught back up to Marsilio Projects and after a quick 2 minute stop they managed to get back on their bikes a little quicker than us. We chased them down and shortly after the check point when we started climbing the last major climb of the race we passed them with ease. They were unable to respond and follow us as we got a gap on them.

At this stage of the race, although I had recovered and was not feeling blown I started to suffer with some cramp as we made our way up the climb. Once over the top I was able to recover. We didn't have to stop for long at the final check point and were on our bikes tracing through the farm lands behind Jeffrey's Bay. I could smell we were getting close to the finish, however, we were unable to see Jeffrey's Bay.

The time of day was just before 6pm (almost 8 hours of racing) and the sun had set over the horizon. It was finally time to put our lights on to see us through to the finish. Knowing this I was feeling good and able to push it as hard as possible. Charles was doing a great job of reading the directions to get us to the finish! And after a slight hiccup of taking one turn too early and having to back track a little we crossed the finish line in second place 8hr31min later, what an amazing feeling!

Will I do it again next year? ...For sure!!!

Results:
1st - Supercars 8hr15min
2nd - Blend Properties 8hr31min
3rd - Marsilio Projects 8hr38min