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!
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!
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