My 20th Cape Argus Pick 'n Pay Cycle Tour

Where's Wally... with a little help from the added circle there's me in the bunch on the front cover of the bumper 35-year edition of the Cape Argus Pick 'n Pay Cycle Tour magazine (along with the other 20 guys haha).

The 35th year of the Cape Argus Pick 'n Pay Cycle Tour also marked my 20th consecutive one! Yes, I'm 27 years old now and that means I did my first one when I was a mere 8 years old and never missed finishing one since. A lot has changed since then and now I'm racing competitively in the elite bunch.

This elite bunch is rather large (I'd say too large for professional road racing consisting of over 200 participants and judging by the time gaps amongst the entire group at the finish) and I normally try and stay out of trouble for the first half of the race avoiding the inevitable crashes (which did happen in a big way at the bottom of the infamous early fast descent of "hospital bend"!). Without doing much road racing this season I found it difficult to hold a decent position in the bunch as handlebars and bums touched while guys squeezed through gaps all at 50km/hr to get closer to the front of the bunch and the big name teams controlled the pace.

I stayed patient until just before Chapmans Peak where I put in some extra efforts and squeezed my way through the bunch to get a bit closer to the front. The pace until this point was slower than the previous year so I knew a bit of tactics amongst the big teams might have been the reason for this and therefore there would be some strong legs in the bunch to really up the tempo over Chappies and Suikebossie to the finish!

Chappies was exactly that as the intensity increased as we neared the top and then continued on the descent as a small break away bunch of about 10 guys had a gap. I found myself hanging onto the back of the main chasing peloton as we swooped around the corners at 60km/hr. It seemed like a blink of an eye and we were already standing up pedaling over little Suikebossie. The main Suikebossie climb was just a blur. I always enjoy climbing, however, this kind of climbing in a road race is very different to the climbing in a mountain bike race, especially having done very little road racing recently! Here they are short lasting only about 5min in which you have to stand up and push out huge watts for the duration, while in mountain biking you are normally forced to stay seated and use more technique and endurance pedaling for a longer time to get you up the climb efficiently.

So, I managed to stay in the main chasing peloton over Suikebossie while the small break away bunch were still a couple of seconds ahead of us. This was to remain until the finish, which at least relieves the pressure off the bunch to sprint for the win at the end (although some of the guys do still sprint for 12th place...) and I was able to cruise over the line to finish my 20th Cycle Tour satisfied with another top elite bunch finish in a time of 2h37m (slower than last year...).