We arrived at the half marathon start Bright and breezy with my batch starting at 6am. On the start I was extremely nervous as I was nurturing a knee injury that I picked up from a heavy fall at the Howick Highlander, which was a couple weeks back. With 2minutes to go until the start Rourke Croeser arrived on the start line. A couple of heavy hitters were definitely there, these included Rourke, Trav Walker & Ryan Ellis.
Straight out the blocks it was Travis who attacked. I gave chase and bridged the gap, this in turn pulled two other riders along with me. As we reached the turn around point of the start loop, it was Rourke, Trav, Ryan and I in a group. Rourke then came to the front and set the pace as we climbed back up towards the golf club.
Unfortunately about 5 or 6kms into the race we took a wrong turn and took a major detour losing all of our places. We eventually noticed the mistake and turned around. We then caught the current leader, Candice Neethling and sat up and chilled, about 12km in we were still all together, riding at only 50% of our heart rate with a few more additions to the bunch. We sat like this until about 15km into the race, suddenly all hell broke loose and the attacks started coming from the boys as we started to hit some major climbs. I dropped off along with Rourke near the top of the climb, but soon managed to close down the gap.
Entering on of the very technical single track sections I went to the front to try and split up the field. I pushed the pace really hard and rode on the limits when we reached the very rocky sections. It worked, I had managed to get a slight gap over Ryan and Rourke, with Trav closely behind me. But stupidly I over shot a corner and crashed heavily trying to correct the mistake. This allowed Ellis to rejoin the group. I pushed super hard to close down the gap that had opened and soon found myself back on their wheels. As we approached the half way point I attacked as we hit one of the climbs, a gap formed between myself and Ryan again with Trav still right behind me, but yet again the gap was closed.
We were now closing in on the climb up towards the Ark. I put in an attack going down one of the single track sections and managed to again get away with Trav. I pushed hard as soon as we hit the bottom of the Ark, but felt a very intense twitch on my right knee. I made the decision to then take it easy and not cause long term damage to my knee as next year is a very big year for me. I nurtured my knee home for 3rd and had conceded 4min to Trav and 3min to Ryan. It was a very disappointing end to the ride, especially after feeling so strong during the race.
Now its time for some good old R&R before the base miles start :) I'll be doing Lake Eland but very chilled, going to ride it as my first base ride...
Until next time
ciao
