Contego Wines2Whales 3-day mtb stage race report

The much anticipated Contego Wines2Whales 3-day mountain bike stage race powered by Maserati (nice!) is a great opportunity to race on "home" soil in the most spectacular environment made for mountain biking! This unique event organized by Stillwater Sports has a fantastic concept and it usually comes as the last race of the year before a little break from the hard training and racing regime that one's body is put through for months prior and therefore it is a race to give everything you have in the system to make it count. This year I partnered up with a fellow Stellenbosch rider, Christiaan Kriek to form Team Blend. With the usual strong local contingent of riders mainly the cross-country mountain biking specialists participating, we thought a podium position would be a respectable outcome with a win being the ultimate goal.

Day 1 didn't get off to an ideal start for us. This was due to us arriving at the start in Lourensford after a good warm-up ride (much needed to get the blood flowing to the legs) just a couple of minutes before take-off, only to find the start chute already packed with riders and therefore having to start right at the very back of the bunch! This meant we had to work really hard to try make our way through all the other riders to get up to the front on the bunch. After some really hard efforts of ducking and diving and weaving our way through we were nearing the front when the guys started lifting the pace and the race began to split into pieces. We were then situated in 3rd place with the two leading teams about 1min/1m30s ahead (thanks to my wife, Jayde, my number one supporter for the important on-route info!). We began to settle into our pace nicely and eventually caught up to the 2nd place team of Contego Giant. We passed them and continued our pursuit of the the leading team of Matthys Beukes and Dominic Calitz of MTBdestinationcom. We were never able to catch up to them, however, we crossed the finished line in Grabouw 1min44sec behind them and 3min48sec ahead of the 3rd place team after a solid days performance.

Day 2 saw us arriving at the start and being on the front line! We were feeling good as we got under way and the main GC contending teams all pushed the pace early on. The stage consists of about 60-70% single track trails around the magnificent area of Grabouw, Oak Valley, Paul Cluver, Thandi and Lebanon. Although this makes for fantastic mountain biking, it also makes for a very cross-country-like mountain bike race and as I am not a cross-country mountain biking specialist like the other top GC contenders we were racing against, I knew personally that it wasn't going to be an easy day. We were flying through the single tracks faster than I have ever gone before and I was constantly pushing the boundaries! I had to play catch-up quite a bit of the time and the high level of concentration need for this kind of riding eventually began to take its toll on me and I started making a few mistakes nearer the end. One of them left me on the ground with some nice "roasties". I managed to bounce back quickly onto my bike and catch back up to the front bunch again, however, the last 5-10km proved a little too much as all the efforts and mishaps lead us to loose some time to the leaders. Christiaan help to get me through the final kilometers and limited the damage by finishing in 4th place and still holding on to our 2nd place on the general classification after the 2 days.

Day 3 personally was a much anticipated day from what I remember of last year as it is far more suited to my riding style being a bit longer than the previous too stages and with some more climbing involved along the way as the route goes from Grabouw to finish on the beach in Onrus. However, mother nature denied us the opportunity to contest the stage as the skies opened up with extreme rainfall and covered the mountains around Grabouw with snow! The race officials deemed the conditions too dangerous to send the riders out on-route and were therefore made to cancel the stage. This is obviously very unfortunate for many reasons, however, I can't imagine what is must be like to be in that situation of having to make that kind of decision and thus deserves the respect. Personally I would always go out in any conditions to finish off a race and I was waiting anxiously in my kit for the start! I had my number one supporter there in full spirits, which would have also made for some added incentive along the way and the best reward to in having her at the finish on the beach after a hard few days of stage racing!


However, there is nothing one can do in this situation other than look forward next years race... The race therefore ended with the positions as of the second day, which meant that Christiaan and I of Team Blend finished in 2nd place ahead of Team Contego Giant taking 3rd and first place going to Team MTBdestinationcom. Thanks to my sponsor Blend Property for making this all possible and thanks Christiaan for a great ride!

New and exciting times ahead

For all the years I've been competing in triathlons and cycling I have never had a coach. At times I've had a running coach purely for running and a swimming coach for squad swimming, otherwise I have simply been my own coach for cycling and triathlons.

There have been numerous reasons for this. Most notably is that I am a science student at university and therefore I enjoy working and exploring data, statistics and data analysis methods. Thus I'm very analytical and enjoy applying the methods I acquire from my university work to my sports training. However, in order to be able to do such things one needs data. This is no problem for me as I have kept a log of everything I have done every day of my life for the past 9 years! From the amount of sleep I get a night, to my body weight every morning and obviously everything associated with the kind of training activities I did each day and race performances. This has provided me with loads of information which I have used to fine tune my training over the years.

Now that I am only concentrating on one discipline (cycling/mountain biking), I have come to realize that it is quite a bit harder to do the fine tuning necessary for my performance to reach the highest possible level, especially in a rather competitive sport where at times only small things can cost you not only a podium position but a top ten position! I have found that there are so many influencing factors and began to doubt myself more often and simply felt the need for some guidance at times.

I always thought that I have become very good at listening to my body and being aware of how I feel, and thus always thought that it would take an outsider a little while to get to know me. However, I am pleased to be completely mistaken as within the very first week I am amazed at how my new coach knows me! I can now definitely see how important it is to have someone telling you what to do and not just deciding for yourself.

I also had quite a few suggestions from some people telling me that I needed a coach to provide me with the extra edge and for one I would like to thank my amazing wife for helping me make up my mind and finally go through with it!

So from now on, I'm under coaches orders!

Slanghoek off-road triathlon

I decided to delve into my roots and take part in a triathlon. Being a mountain biker and ex-triathlete, an off-road triathlon sounds like the perfect thing to do for some fun this time of year.

With minimal swimming or running training finding a time and place in my cycling training schedule my objective apart from having a fun race was to simply go out and ride the bike leg as hard as I possibly could to get some speed work in before the last race of the season in two weeks time. Therefore the objective for the swim and the run was simply... hang in there and survive!

Survive I did in the swim and exited the water about just over a minute behind the leader. My lack of triathlon participate over the last two years came to show in the often forgotten 4th discipline of triathlon... the transition. I made the amateur of all amateur errors and lost my bike in the transition that resulted in me running around the rather large transition area like a lost fart in a thunder storm (in my defense the officials had, however, allowed the participants of the shorter route who were starting later into the transition area to rack their bikes, which meant that there were lots of people all around the transitions area). Otherwise all was fine after finding my bike and I headed off in pursuit of the 4 guys ahead of me. I managed to catch up to the leader after 6km and continued to keep pushing the pace. From what I could tell I had built up a sizable lead going into the run.

I felt good on the run and was most please with how I was going until I got to 7km. The run ended up being just under 13km and I started to take some major strain after 7km. I started to get very stiff and my muscles were hurting. However, "hang in there and survive" to the finish I managed and topped it off with first place by just over 10min!

As I write this two days after the race I feel as if my entire body should be wrapped in plaster-paris in order to limit my movements as everything hurts so bad! In conclusion to run 13km at full pace without any training is not a good idea.