XC: Saturday:
Saturday saw the second race of the festival, the XC (cross Country) and this also doubled up as the final race in the KZN XC cup series. The racing for this race was a little different from the previous XC’s as you had to race in your age group not in your chosen batch. This placed me in the C batch and my race was off at 9:30 am.
The start was off on time. As we took off Travis Walker came to the front and sat in front off me. I sat behind him and let him pull for quite a while we opened a gap on the rest of the field and we sat with each other until we caught up to the back markers of the previous batches.
Travis managed to squeeze through a couple of gaps and broke away. I waited until I could find a gap in the single track and I took every chance after that to try catching him again.
I pushed hard every lap and felt that my times were consistent but the gap between Travis and I continued to increase slightly each lap. I still went as hard as I could and I managed to get into a group of the faster elite riders and let them pull me, which enabled me to conserve some energy.
In the end I could not close the gap enough, but I still managed to grab 2nd overall in the Youth championship, 2nd in batch and 2nd in age group. I was really happy with my result as I had achieved one of my goals for my first year as a youth rider.
The course was really awesome, one of the best XC course I have ridden, great single track, slippery river crossings and a tough rock garden/river crossing. Well done to every one who put a great amount of work into the course!
45km Half Marathon:
Over the last two days the Karkloof had seen the Friday night race, the XC and the Dash for Cash. Today was the final races, the 75km Marathon and the 45km half marathon.
I had a game plan for the race and was really eager to get started at 09h00. The start was very fast and I was really surprised that no one came with me as I soon found myself out in front on my own as I had put in attack very early effort to draw out the faster riders in my batch so that we would have a clear run at the course and hopefully a good race on the day.
I then decided to settle into a comfortable pace and soon had Travis and another rider with me, but we still had a long way to go. The first big climb of the day drew close and both Travis and I put in an attack in order to drop the other rider.
I sat on the front of the break away for most of the race with Travis just sitting on my wheel and not really helping to work to stay ahead of a hard charging Jedson Tooms.
Then at about 30km or so into the race, my juice bottle was empty and I knew I had made a big mistake by only taking 1 bottle for the race!
I knew had to go with Trav for as long as possible, but I could feel myself needing some energy. He opened a small gap on me on the bottom of the KOM (king of the mountains) I gave chase but slowly began running out of energy.
A little while after this, Jedson caught me and I gave chase as long as I could, but I had completely blown all my energy.
With only 8km to go I blew completely and could only try and stay on the bike and nurse my body to the finish.
I definitely learnt from my costly mistake!!!
Well-done to the organizers once again, the course was a lot tougher than last year, but was absolutely awesome.
A big thank you to Andrew Nicholson, Barry Hullett, Bruce Mackenzie and Rene Stubbs for all their hard work in putting this great event together. It was really awesome! Thanks loads!!!
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