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...
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