Ride Crater Cruise

The Ride Crater Cruise as I have come to realize is a big event on the mountain biking calendar, however, mainly for the Gautengers and the top pro's of the country. It attracts a large field of competitors due to the nature of the course being suitable for roadies. On the other hand the pro's are attracted to this event for the prize money, as it holds the biggest payout on the racing calendar. This was to be yet another first time event for me this year and the also last round of the 2010 MTN national ultra-marathon series.

Going into this race, I was sitting in 17th position in the series rankings. This is after doing 4 out of the 6 races in the 2010 series thus far and having two dismal performances at two of the races (I will put the link to my next post on 2010 MTN National Ultra-Marathon Series Round-Up here once they have updated the log standings to include the last race).

So now I can say I’ve been to Parys as it was the host town for this race. I’ve never heard of Parys until a few months before when planning to do this race. As normal up on the Highveld I was anticipating a hot and dry day and true to me knowledge temperatures were in the mid-thirties! This places me a bit out of my comfort zone coming from a nice Cape Town winter, but it was definitely good preparation for the following weeks DCM Cape Pioneer Trek.

This race starts off much like a road race, literally as the first 15 kilometers are on tar and very flat. This resulted in a few riders trying to get off the front of the sizable peloton before we encountered the first technical section. I had studied the route map before and saw this particular point of the course marked as the “bunch breaker” and therefore positioned myself right towards the front of the bunch. Going through this section I was well positioned around firth and had to concentrate hard in order to closely follow the wheel in front of me.

After getting back onto the gravel roads the bunch had thinned out a little but it was still quite large for a mountain bike race. It only really split up when we got to the first of only two climbs of the race. I managed to keep up with the relatively hard tempo set up the first climb and the concrete strips. Then the race blew into pieces as we ascended a very steep rough technical climb! I lost a few of the wheels in front of me as everyone scrambled on and off their bikes as we made our way up the climb. After negotiating the technical descent I found myself with two other guys chasing the front group of 8 riders.

We weren’t successful in catching back up to the leaders. However, we rode a solid pace through the searing heat and stayed clear of any other riders behind us.

This performance gave me my best result this year in the MTN national ultra-marathon series with 11th place and 13 minutes behind the winner Kevin Evans of team MTN Energade. This was a nice way to end off the year of racing the MTN national ultra-marathon series, knocking on the door of the top ten. I can now only wait until next year to see how I can shape up and hopefully have improved after gaining valuable experience this year.

Until then, the big one of the season, the DCM Cape Pioneer Trek awaits. But first, the “spooky” Ladysmith Cheese Seweweekspoort mountain bike challenge.