Momentum Health-KZN XC Cup #4-Cascades

Well, this weekend just past saw the 4th round of the Momentum Health Provincial xc cup series. The race was held on the new World Cup course, and boy did it make for some awesome racing.

My batch was off at around 09:30, and the pace was pretty slow off the start line. I sat second wheel until the first steep kick into the single track and that's where I began to pick up the pace a little. By the time we reached the top of the first section, I had managed to open a very small gap. Then I decided to push it really hard coming back down through the twisty single track and managed to maintain the gap.

During this attack, Luke Roberts (Maverick) unfortunately became the victim of a terminal mechanical with his bike and was forced to pull out. At this stage I was unaware that Luke was out and decided to keep the pace pretty stiff to see if the guys would respond especially on the toughest part of the course, and by the end of the first lap I had a gap of about 40sec and was aware that I had broken eye contact with the chasing group.

Still not aware of Luke's misfortune I tried to keep a steady pace on the second and third lap and was pleasantly surprized to learn that I was steadily opening the gap.

Going into the last lap I had a gap just over 4min, and really wanted to double it and try and set my fastest lap of the day and in order to do so I really had to push hard.Luckily I made no silly mistakes as I had done in some of my previous races and when I crossed the finish line I had managed to open the gap to around 7min over second place.

rock garden

It was really a good race. It was hard but it was good and the win was an awesome confidence booster with the S.A XC Cup National coming up this weekend.

Thanks to Kim for putting together an insane course!and a big thank you to the Maverick Cycles for hosting such an awesome event.

My team mates Craig Paul had a super race, wrapping up the elite men's race ahead of the Aussie, Andrew Blair, and Candice Neetling won the Elite ladies comfortably.Well done guys.

This next week is gonna be really chilled, Rourke Croeser is spending some time here with me at my house for a couple of days ,so that he can get to know the course a little better and I will also be using the opportunity to learn from him while also using the chance to do some checking out the course and finalising those lines before the weekend's race.

Until next time
Ciao