Double Century 2010

Photo: Torque Pics (www.torquepics.co.za)

This year would be my second Double Century (DC). Last year was my first and I raced it with the Club100 Elite team where we came forth by 45sec! It was a little disappointing to just miss out on the podium. This year I got the opportunity to race it with the Anderson Transport team. This was very exciting but at the same time a little daunting as Anderson Transport are the defending champions! I’m always up for a challenge and this year I feel much better prepared for the DC based on the endurance mountain bike racing I’ve been doing over this year compared to last year.

The only problem was that I would have just finished a relatively long season of racing and just gotten married. Therefore the last two weeks leading up to the DC have been rather easy weeks for me. However, I was not worried as I believed I would still have a good base fitness in me and all it would mean is that I will be nicely rested for the race.

With these thoughts in mind I was good to go. But, there was one other worry in the back of my mind. I seemed to pick up a chest infection during the week prior to race day while on honeymoon. I felt physically fine but my chest was rather tight and I just could not stop coughing! (more on this…) But pulling out of the race with only a few days to go to the start was not an option for me as I didn’t want to miss out on this opportunity and especially let the rest of the team down!

Traditionally with the DC there are just over 200 teams consisting of 12 riders in each. You have to have six riders from your team finishing together with the time of your 6th rider counting as your team’s time for the overall positions. It is a staggered start with each team starting individually apart from the other teams, similar to a time trail. Being the defending champions, we were the last team to start.

We were doing fine with an average speed for the first 20km of 42.1km/hr. After the first climb and a minor mechanical issue that needed to be fixed causing us to loose a couple of minutes, we still had our full team of 12 riders together. After the next big climb and leading into Montagu at about 100km we had lost one or two riders. I was still feeling fine at this stage, but from after the 100km mark things started to go a little pear shaped. It was tough going along the road between Montagu and Ashton as the road is very narrow and congested with riders and team support vehicles. We mostly had to ride on the other side of the white line into oncoming traffic, which weren’t all that considerate! This made for some dangerous encounters and a few very close calls! After this I could feel I was starting to get tied. I kept pushing on until my legs gave in at Bonnivalle, 163km with 40km to go to the finish. I dropped off the back of our team and tried desperately to hang on but I had nothing left in me. I was blown and that meant that there were only 7 riders still together in our team. One other rider dropped off after me before they got to the finish resulting in only 6 riders finishing together and therefore just making it with enough riders to the finish and take third place overall.

I continued to make my way slowly to the finish with a lot of difficulties, but I wanted to complete the race. I ended up crossing the finish line about 20min after our team of 6 riders. We were obviously not all that happy with our performance as being the defending champions and only coming 3rd, but that’s the way it goes, at least we were still on the podium and there is always next year to fight back!