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!