Seweweekspoort 80km MTB challenge

Photo: Oakpics (www.oakpics.com)

A trip consisting of 9 days away racing with team Blend Properties kicked off with the Ladismith Cheese Seweweekspoort Mountain bike challenge. This has been a race that I have always wanted to do. I now finally got the opportunity to compete in it and it would act as a solid warm-up race two days before the big daddy (The 6 day DCM Cape Pioneer Trek) began.

The race starts amongst some farms about 25km outside of Ladismith (in the Calitzdorp direction) near where the gravel road leaves Route 62 and heads into the “spooky” Seweweekspoort. It covers a distance of 80km taking you through the poort around a small technical loop on the other side then back through the poort again and through the farms back to Ladismith. It is believed that the ghost of one of the first toll gate keepers still wanders around the ruins of the original toll house at the northern entrance of the poort. On dark stormy nights, a couple of motorists have been stopped by a man with a lantern and as soon as they approach him he disappears.

The pace wasn’t very fast heading out through the Poort with only a few accelerations here and there. A more steady acceleration towards the exit of the Poort on the northern side broke the group up such that it was just Kevin Evans (MTN Energade), my team mate from Blend Properties Charles, Carl Pasio and I together. As we started on the loop on the other side with one relatively short technical climb, I just dropped off of Charles and Kevin. I was only about 10 seconds behind them until we started another climb and Kevin put the hammer down and I was unable to catch back on and the gap grew a little bigger.

This was not an ideal situation to be in as it was a long way back (just over 50km!) from here with a significant amount of gravel road! I was stuck about 1 minute behind the leading two of Kevin and Charles and about 1 to 2 minutes ahead of Carl in 4th place when we got back onto the gravel road to take us back through the poort. At this point I wish that I had seen this ghost man with a lantern as I’m sure I would have ridden so fast that I would have caught back up to the leaders in very little time!

So what do I do? Sit up and wait for Carl to catch back up to me so that we can work together or just put my head down and ride as hard as possible in the hope of catching back up to the leaders? To be honest this didn’t occur to me the second I got onto the gravel road. The only thing I thought of was to go as hard as I could and try catching the leaders and staying away from Carl in 4th place!

It was frustrating not being able to see them in front of me the whole way through the Poort due to all the twists and turns through the mountains. But as we exited the poort (on the South side) I could see them up ahead and was able to time the gap at about 1 minute.

I had to keep the pace up and this continued all the way to the finish as I just couldn’t close the gap. Therefore it ended up being like a 50km time trail for me. The gap remained much the same and I only lost a little more time towards the end as I ended up finishing 2 to 3 minutes behind. I was able to open up a significant gap on 4th place as I finished about 6 minutes ahead.

I held an average speed of 33km/hr for the last 60km and an average heart rate of 166bpm. This was a little harder than what I would have liked to have worked during this race considering what’s coming in two days time! However, at least I was able to finish on the podium in 3rd place.