Attakwas MTB race 2012

The 120km Attakwas is a crazy mountain bike race! I just felt the need to get that off my chest...

But it is also one of the most awesome races on the calendar and one which every mountain biker has to do (to be able to call themselves a true mountain biker... haha only joking)! Last year I unfortunately had to miss the race due to my illness (read here). Therefore standing on the start line I had only a few faint nightmarish images of what lay ahead.

The route is composed of some proper mountain biking for the first 70 odd kilometers taking in the relentless Attakwas Kloof while the remaining 50km consists of gravel roads with tons of serious climbs on tied legs to the finish in Groot Brak River near Mossel Bay.

I started out conservatively allowing the other guys to set the pace and just made sure I stayed on the wheels in front of me. I knew there was a very long way to go and I wanted to preserve some energy for the Kloof as this is where the race would most likely split up. The first support zone came at 45km where I got see my loyal supporters and receive a crucial water bottle to get me through the Kloof. We were still a group of about 10 guys at the time with only Renay Goustra 2min up ahead. This didn't last long, as expected once going through the Kloof the group simply blew into pieces! I felt fine and managed to hold a position round about 5th with relatively small time gaps.

After exiting the Kloof and very happy to have survived I had my Blend Property team mate Charles Keey along side me to work together. We were able to gradually eat into the time gaps to those ahead, while only Matthys Beukes (MTBdestination) seemed to have other ideas and had powered his way into the lead building up a gap of 3min with 25km to go. After catching up to some of the others along the way our group of 4 consisting of Philip Buys (Contego Giant), Neil Macdonald (RECM), Charles and myself (Blend) were chasing, however, my legs started to shout terrible things at me...

With just 15km to go as we started the second last major climb our group of 4 disintegrated as Charles powered away from the rest of us up the climb in pursuit of the lone leader Matthys. I just couldn't hang onto the wheels of Philip and Neil which left me fighting the last 15km into the wind by myself with a very beaten up body.

In the end Charles was just unable to make up the rather large time gap Matthys had built up thus finishing in a very impressive 2nd place while however agonizing it was for me to see the other 2 just a bit further up the road over those last kilometers I couldn't catch up to them and had to settle with 5th place.

Overall a great race and start to the 2012 year especially for team Blend Property!


1. Matthys Beukes (MTBdestination) - 5:09
2. Charles Keey (Blend Property) - 5:13
3. Philip Buys (Contego Giant) - 5:17
4. Neil Macdonald (RECM) - 5:17
5. Dave Morison (Blend Property) - 5:19

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.

Seweweekspoort mtb race

This years edition of the Seweweekspoort mountain bike race attracted some big names to the start line as it occurs just 2-days before and serves as a good warm up race to the Cape Pioneer Trek 6-day mountain bike stage race taking place in close proximity (which is exactly what we did last year).

They made a slight change in the route this year and added in an extra 2km loop of jeep track to make the total distance 82km of great mountain biking in the Klein Karoo region of Ladismith. There was quite a wind on the morning of the race, which didn't make the going any easier.

It was one of those days for me where I maybe wasn't feeling quite as good as I would have liked (simply by comparing to how I've felt in a few past races in recent weekends) and I suffered throughout the entire race! The attacks happened from the start and the race split up into pieces! In mountain biking (and road racing), if you snooze for one single second you can be caught out and miss a split in the race and end up way out of contention! As the race got a little more established and we exited the first section of jeep track and were then heading along the gravel road through the poort, 4 guys including my team mate from Blend, Stu and I found ourselves making up the chase pack behind the two leaders of David George and Kevin Evans from team 360Life. We all rode hard and almost caught up to them as we exited the poort on the other side.

The loop on the other side of the poort proved to be rather challenging due in part to a section of the track that was submerged by a very full dam alongside. This saw us trying to ride through Karoo bossies and I managed a slow motion flip over my handlebars to land on my feat. The race once again spread out here and on our return through the poort Stu, Ruan Du Toit and I chased hard and caught up to the leaders.

We then remained as a lead group of six until David George put in an effort and surged away from the group. I was really suffering and was only just hanging onto the group. As David increased his lead on the 5 of us I knew the last big climb at 73km would be the race decider. Unfortunately I just didn't have the legs and as we hit the climb our group split up completely and remained that way until the end.

David George managed to take the win 30 seconds ahead of his 360Life team mate Kevin Evans and Ruan Du Toit making up the podium. Ben-Melt Swanepoel crossed the line in 4th 2min after the winning time followed by Stu a few seconds behind in 5th and then myself another 39sec afterwards in 6th place.

My hardcore wife, Jayde, continued her excellent mountain bike racing exploits after her successful Karoo to Coast and completed not the short route option of the Seweweekspoort, not the medium 45km route but the full 82km marathon distance! Shortly after finishing it was time for us to head straight back to Cape Town to sleep a couple of hours only to wake up at 4am to get out to Wellington to race the One Tonner 152km road race with my Double Century team!

MTN Marathon mtb National - Crater Cruise

Never failing as probably the most competitive mountain bike race in the country for numerous reasons, my second year back in Parys for the Crater Cruise was different from the previous year in that it was even more competitive than ever before! It really does live up to the expectations of a final event of an annual national series fantastically organized by Advendurance.

I remembered the route very well from last year as well as how the race usually pans out. Thus my game plan was to just sick in the bunch with a decent position for the first few tight sections and then make it over the main technical climb just before the half way point with a strong group. This I managed and as the race began to split into pieces up the climb I was well positioned with a few other top guys. Unfortunately for me I had to stop at the top before descending the other side of the climb to pump up my back tire as it had lost a fair amount of air and I wouldn't have been able to descend down the rough track with it that way. At the bottom of I saw a small group of about 3 guys 1 minute ahead of me and I was isolated as I couldn't see anyone behind me.

So with 60km still to go I pushed on at a solid pace and still never saw anyone catch up to me from behind and the gap to the guys in front of me remained around the 1 minute mark as I got the time splits from my amazing number one supporter (my wife).

I was able to catch up to and pass two guys along the way and finish exactly 11min after the winner Kevin Evans (who won the race for the 3rd time in a row!). I was happy with my performance and felt I had a solid race. Unfortunately I was not happy with my position as I didn't improve on the previous year and finished 17th. However, when looking over the results from the day I am a little more satisfied due to the large amount of competition and small time gaps separating the top 20 positions! I can honestly say that I have never done a mountain bike race in South Africa with such a strong field before! This is great for the sport in the country!

A big thanks has to be mentioned for Jayde, my wife and my number one supporter who did a fantastic job in seconding me and being there with me, it always makes a huge difference!