Most likely the biggest race on the calendar for the year is the South African Championships as all the best riders turn up to race for the national title. This years event was held at Inanda Dam in the vicinity of the valley of a thousand hills in KZN. This would be the first time I would ever venture into this region. It was quite something driving to the race in the morning down the steep winding road into the valley. I really felt like I was in the heart of Africa and it was quite hard to believe that we were only 15min from Hillcrest!
The race was set over a shorter distance than usual for the elites, 84km as apposed to the standard ultra marathon distances of over 100km. The intention was that the route was more technical than usual and was still expected to yield a winning time of over 4hrs. The route profile also shows that the race consisted of many shorter sharp climbs and therefore resembled more of a cross-country like formate. This doesn't really suite me as I prefer the big longer climbs and cross-country mountain bike racing is not my strong point. However, it was SA Champs and I was there to give everything I had to get me to the finish line in the best possible position.
The first 15 odd kilometers of the race was very intense as the guys raced to get to the technical single tracks in a good position. I was struggling to hang on to the fast pace from the gun, but just kept it consistent. After 20km I managed to settle down and caught back up to quite a few guys.
At one point in the race I was cruising down one of the steep descents and then couldn't slow down in time for a sharp turn that was to take us off the gravel road onto some single track. Needless to say I tried making the corner but failed and went straight over my handle bars into the bushes. There happened to be some community kids watching at that point and of coarse they found this very amusing! I quickly straightened up my saddle and remounted as a small group of guys came up from behind me.
I stuck with this group for some part of the way until about 25km to go we came across a very steep climb. I was on the front of the group and made the mistake of not changing from my front big chain ring into the smaller chain ring in time. My only option was to push hard in the big blade and simply attack, which I did. Once I got to the top I had quite a big gap on the others and then thought that it was time to put my head down and keep going as hard as I possibly could to the finish.
This turned out to be a great move as I caught up and passed 4 riders. I then caught up to Ben Swanepoel who stayed with me for the last 10km. However, this part of the course consisted of lots of technical single track and I was starting to get rather tied from my hard efforts. I started making a few mistakes on the single track that caused me to loose the wheel of Ben and therefore finishing about 30sec behind him in 11th place.
My finishing time was 3hr40min (15min after the winner Burry Stander of Mr Price Specialized) and therefore much quicker than the anticipated over 4hr winning time of the course! Just shows how good the standard of mountain biking is in South Africa at the moment and therefore after just missing out on the top 10 I could still be very happy with my performance (as I was just 4min after 7th place). What also made a big difference for me was that I had my wife, Jayde there for support and to provide me with much necessary backup along the way!
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