Living about 1km from the venue I was able to sleep in, and only crawled out of bed at around 7am. At around 08:00 I took a chilled ride down to Cascades. I met up with good friend Trav Walker sporting his new colours of DCM Chrome, and we headed off for a good decent warm up before the 09:00 am start. There were one or two big names including Brandon Stewart and Craig Paul that were entered as well so I had to ensure the legs would be warm when the flag dropped.
At 9 sharp we were off and the pace was pretty quick and I tried to find a good rythm. But pretty soon Craig Paul ( Team Jeep)and Brandon Stewart came to the front and the pace really heated up. The bunch split up realy quickly and soon it was Craig, Brandon, Trav and I in the front.
Craig really pushed hard and it really made life on the bike hard as I had to dig deep to stay in touch. A couple of kilometers into the race I came to the front in one of the single tracks and pushed the pace as hard as I could to see if anyone in the group would drop off. Craig and Brandon stuck to me but we'd managed to get a small gap on Trav before the first major climb.
After the relatively short steep climb we'd opened up a bigger gap on Trav, but Brandon and Craig didn't let up the pace, it was relentless!!
The three of us hit the half way mark in 45 minutes flat and we were still all together, but pretty much as soon as we crested a steep sharp climb after the water point, Brandon launched his attack. At this point I was hurting and at first I had no legs to respond and neither did Craig, but it was a make or break situation and I decided to try push through the pain.
I slowly closed the gap and caught up to Brandon again after a really big effort. Brandon was now really on fire and I was struggling to stay with him and when we hit an open road, Brandon came into his own and just rode off the front. I gave chase and tried to catch up again but he was just far too strong.
I was hoping that Craig would come through again but had unfortunatly lost touch of us for a short while and then took a wrong turn and he got lost, so I was left to chase down Brandon by myself. We were now reaching the closing stages of the race and with Brandon having opened up just over a minute I had to crank it up a notch.
With 5km to go I hadn't closed the gap at all, but I kept pushing to open up the gap on 3rd as nI was unaware of who was behind me and how far behind they may be. I pushed down the technical single track and sprinted to the finish line, and crossed the line with just over a minute behind Brandon. I was super stoked with the result as I had improved my best result overall in a Super Classic to second place.
Congrats to Craig who worked his way back up to fourth position after taking his wrong turn. The organisers also deserve a shout out for an amazing coarse. It was a real mountain bikers event and despite not being the easiest race I thouroughly enjoyed every minute of it. Well done to all involved!
Results: Overall
1st- Brandon Stewart (DCM Chrome)
2nd- Brendon Davids (Team Jeep SA)
3rd- Travis Walker (DCM Chrome)
4th- Craig Paul (Team Jeep SA)
5th- David Louw
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