Karoo to Coast 2011

It was time for one of my favorite mountain biking races of the year, the Karoo to Coast from Uniondale to Knysna. This race has grown incredibly over the last few years and must surely rate as one of the most popular mountain biking races in the country. This is my third time back doing it in a row and after just missing out on the podium to finish 4th last year with a broken chain towards the end http://davemorisonbiking.blogspot.com/2010/09/karoo-to-coast.html it would obviously be nice to try get onto the podium. However, this would be my first real test after recovering from my knee injury http://davemorisonbiking.blogspot.com/2011/09/where-have-i-been.html and thus my true form relative to the other competitors was uncertain. There were a number of top riders lining up this year, most notably Neil MacDonald and Waylon Woolcock of the RECM team from Joberg.

I knew the beginning part up the Ou Wa Pad was going to be the usual killer and things would settle a bit thereafter. My plan was to keep it together and try hang on for as long as possible without going to far into the red. About halfway up I could feel I was starting to fall off the pace a bit and then simply put my chain into an easier gear stayed calm and rode a steady tempo. Shortly after, the few guys that had started to pull away began to split up and I slowly started to real them in before the top of the climb. At the top of the climb I found myself in a group of 5 riders chasing the two RECM guys who managed to get a gap over the top.

Now that the first obstacle was done, it was time to recover and settle into the race before encountering the remaining 1400 meters of climbing still to come. After descending the pass and as we began to climb out of the valley, the two leaders were only just visible in front of us. I went to the front of our group and set a steady tempo up the climb. About halfway up I looked back to see that two of the guys had dropped off and we were left with only three of us now to chase. However, our chase was not succeeding and hearing a few sketchy time gaps along the way, we weren't making up any more ground on them.

At 57km, I started to get itchy feet and pushed the pace a little. This caused our group of three to split up. I thought it was still quite a long way from the finish with just under 40km to go with quite a lot of climbing still to come to be isolated, however, I felt good and decided it was time. From then on I put my head down and rode flat out.

I started to get a little tied going along the Kom se Pad section with about 20km to go. I couldn't afford to ease up too much but I had to try conserve a bit on energy otherwise I would blow going up the last daunting Simola climb. At one stage I glanced behind and could see Ruan du Toit. I kept it together and put in a few harder efforts now and then and by the time I started dropping into the valley before climbing back out up to Simola he was out of sight again. I was able to ride up the Simola climb at a solid pace and from there it was simply freewheeling 80km/hr down the road and into the beautiful town of Knysna.

My pacing throughout was perfect to hold onto third place. Unfortunately I wasn't able to catch back up to the two leaders, but in the end I managed to pull back about a minute and a half on them after going solo around the 57km mark. Otherwise it was a very successful come back race and I look forward to the next few weeks of racing!

Next up is the Oudtshoorn 3-day mtb race starting Friday!

Making a come back

I decided after building up my training for the past 6 weeks I wanted to do a training race to see where my level is at. I was wanting to do this before the Karoo 2 Coast mountain bike race later in September, as this is normally quite a competitive one. This would also help me to get a rough feel for what I can expect of myself. So I loaded up the bakkie with my racing steed including Jaydes trusty mountain bike and we headed for Caledon to take part in the Staalwater 60km mountain bike race held by AMA Rider and Dirtopia.

What a fantastic race it turned out to be! The route designed by Meurant Botha was awesome and much more interesting than I had expected. I also didn't expect to see some names like Erik Kleinhans and Christiaan Kriek on the start line, which meant it was going to be a proper race and a lot harder than I had in mind being a come back training race.

Christiaan provided a true welcome-back-to-racing from the gun with a cross country mountain bike like start. The pace soon settled and after a steep climb at a solid tempo it was only Erik, Christiaan and myself out up front with no-one in sight behind. We rode nicely together until the climb with about 15km to go to the finish. I was basically on my limit and hanging on when the gradient of the road suddenly kicked up round a corner and Erik dropped a gear, stood up and powered his pedals. Being on the limit I was unable to respond and Christiaan managed to go with him leaving me behind. As we went over the top of the climb I was a few seconds behind and tried to catch back on to them, however, they worked well together and rode hard making sure I wouldn't see them again before the finish line. Therefore I ended up crossing the finish line about 2min behind them in 3rd place.

I could definitely feel that I didn't quite have that upper level of performance in me to match the other two throughout the race, however, I was satisfied with my performance at this point in time. This turned out to be a very successful trip for me as it provided me with exactly what I wanted, a great race on a decent course with good competitors providing me with a bench mark from which to build in the coming weeks of training and racing. And Jayde put on a fine performance to finish 2nd in her age group!

Now for a seemingly very short two weeks until Karoo 2 Coast!

Where have I been?

It is about 4 months since the end of the joBerg2c and therefore 4 months of being out of competition. Basically, I picked up a niggle in my knee about half way through the most incredible 9-day stage race known as joBerg2c. Being a lengthy stage race and the extreme physical demand on your body there was certainly no chance the niggle would go away and thus only got worse and became a full fledged injury.

After 7 days I could barely walk after the stages and with only 2 days to go I just had to stick it out as I was certainly not going to let my partner, sponsors and everyone else down after coming so far and holding a high position over all as well as miss out on the rest of the amazing journey to the sea. The whole time I also believed I would just get through the race and afterwards simply take one or two weeks off to recover and allow my knee to get better and I'll be back to normal...

Little did I know, it certainly didn't turn out that way! The 5th leg of the MTN national marathon series was taking place in Tulbugh on the Saturday, one week after riding onto the beach in Scottburough and it was definitely planned as a must do race in my diary. After taking the week off the bike and being unsure as to how my knee was doing, I went for a spin on the Friday to assess it. It was not at all good and the pain returned within a few minutes of riding. It was obviously not better yet and I had another race, the 100miler the following Saturday. Now I had to make the decision to unfortunately miss the national on the Saturday and give my knee another week to heal so that I can at least give the 100miler a good go. This I did and come the following Friday I went for an easy spin to assess it once again. Yet again the pain returned after only a few minutes of riding! This devastated me and I had thoughts of just trying to do the 100miler regardless as it was also the last race of the season and I have unfinished business with this race after leading last year and being overtaken with 1km to go thus finishing 2nd. However, this wouldn't have been wise as there was obviously something seriously wrong with my knee and it needed some attention as simple rest was not working.

So, the doctors appointments and MRI scans began to appear in my dairy instead of any sort of training. It turns out that I developed a chronic case of tendonitis in my knee. The only thing I could do was simply to give it time and rest. Finally I had to accept this and the days all of a sudden became long and the weeks even longer. I couldn't think ahead or plan any races as I had no idea when the tendon would decide to get better.

Another disappointment came when Jayde and I had entered to do a 3-day mountain biking stage race in the beautiful region of Knysna. I was really looking forward to this as it meant spending some fun time on the bike in my favorite part of SA with the most beautiful girl in the world! What more could I ask for! This would have been our first mtb stage race together. However, my knee was still not better and I didn't want to sacrifice all the weeks I had already taken off the bike up until this point to be back at square one again. I also needed to think ahead for the coming months in preparing for the next few races during the second half of the year.

The next race to come and go was the Knysna mountain bike and road race. At this stage I had taken 8 weeks off and my knee was still not better! It was now only 4 weeks until my next scheduled race, Die Burger mountain bike race in Stellenbosch, which is another big event on the annual calendar. As it got nearer I was still unable to do any training and thus obviously Die Burger passed by without me on the start line.

It was now 12 long, frustrating and depressing weeks since the end of the joBerg2c. I'd been driving Jayde mad by this time with all my frustration and anxiety, however, I tried riding and my knee seemed to be ok (not 100%). I was advised that I should at this point start training and building up slowly and see how it goes. There was nothing else really that I could do as it had been so long now and I was also at the stage where if it wasn't better yet then I would almost have to right off the rest of the year!

The first 2 weeks of being back on the bike went by and I had built up to just over 10hrs of training in the week. To my surprise my knee actually felt like it was progressively getting better as I kept building up the mileage in the weeks! The only disappointing thing at this point was to see yet another big anticipated race on the calendar pass by, the Transbaviaans 230km mountain bike race, which was another race we came 2nd as a team last year and obviously were intending on chasing the top spot on the podium this time round. However, at lease I was back on the bike.

It has been 6 weeks of gradually building up my training now and so far so good. With throwing in a little bit of intensity training only in the last week I have at least manage to build up to a 20hr week last week. It has been really hard to finish off 2010 well and with such exciting goals to look forward to chasing in 2011 and then being held back from doing all that. So for the 100miler, the Transbaviaan, the Knysna and Die Burger as well as the MTN national marathon series in which a large portion of my annual goals lay, I can only hope 2012 will be a lot different to 2011!

For now, although it will be a little early in my build up, however doable, the excitement is focused on one of my favorite races and this time round it will be my comeback race on 25 September, the Karoo 2 Coast mountain bike race.