Another bright and early morning, and an extremely hot one to, with the temperature reading 33 degrees at 07h30 in the morning greeted us as we rolled into the Mountain View Park venue just outside Bishopstowe in Pietermaritzburg to participate in the 2nd KZN XC provincial.
The weather forecast had indicated we were in for a scorcher and I needed to prepare accordingly in the run up to the event.
The heat was unbearable, so much so that each batch had been told to drop one lap. I had entered the A batch and we were only scheduled to start at 10h00, which meant we would be racing in the heat of the day.
The start was unusually slow but about 1km into the race, the pace picked up considerably.
Travis Walker riding for Maverick and myself managed to break away from the pack up the first climb, as we approached some back markers I got caught up behind them and Travis used the opportunity to make a break. I put the hammer down to close the gap, but was constantly reminding myself to pace myself as I still had three and a half hard hot laps ahead of me. As we hit the big dirt road and single track climb, the sun hit me like a brick wall.
I changed my strategy in the feed zone and ensured my neutral feeder kept me on track with a bottle of ice water to cool myself down as I came through. I continued to push on in an effort to close the gap a little bit at a time but this plan was put to rest when my seat worked itself loose in the third lap, making it my slowest lap of the day. I tried frantically to tighten it but could only tighten it little by little (due to the size of my multi tool). I managed to get going with a semi-tightened saddle and decided that I would just have to give it my best and try to regain the second place position I had lost while carrying out the repairs to the seat.
I put the hammer down and went as hard as I could for the last two laps and despite the heat put in a good fourth and final lap but had to settle for third position in the batch and a second in the youth category.
I was really happy with the result especially with the fact that I was able to hold it together, while so many of the other competitors succumbed to the heat which was reaching 46 degrees in the shade in the feed zone and over 50 degrees on parts of the course.
The course was tough with the open veld single track, and a couple of rock gardens thrown in for fun. There were pallet crossings at the river and some really tricky technical bits.
Thank you to ˚the organizers who could unfortunately not order the weather, but were able to put together a great day’s racing.
˚C
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