Hey guys, this past weekend was the 4th and final round of the national series before the once off, South African Championship. It was held at Mankele Bike park, just outside of Nelspruit, so we packed up after school broke up on Wednesday and hit the road at 1am on Thursday morning in an effort to get the 7 hour trip behind us as early as possible.
The course at Mankele was definitely to my liking and turned out to be beautiful on the full suss! as my WSquared Merida 96 Carbon was working a real treat. My new Nokian Tyres were also hooking up really good and I felt super confident for the race which lay ahead, and I definitely felt the strongest I've been all year.
Saturday dawned, and after a good nights rest I crawled over to the start/finish area after lying in a bit, to support Candice Neethling and Mariske Strauss in the ladies race, which was very close at the time. I lounged around for a couple of hours, keeping myself highly motivated at all times while focusing on the task ahead later on in the day.
12h05 arrived and it was time to line up. I had a front row seeding, and a perfect line into the first corner. The whistle blew, and we all jolted for position immediately. Out of the first corner it was James Reid, Arno du Toit, Luke Roberts and myself up front. We then had an extremely long straight ahead of us, and this allowed the bunch to close the small gap that had formed. At the end of the straight was a single track that peeled off to the left and this definitely made for some interesting tactics and some pretty sketchy entries, as everyone jostled for position. I entered around 3rd position, exactly as planned in my pre race strategy and heard a huge crash behind me. Not thinking anything of it the racing continued, however the crash had turned out to be a huge crash involving Micheal Hughes, who walked away from the most insane accident scene imaginable, but was unfortunately unable to continue with his race.
James made his break up the first climb, and Gert Heyns and I countered. My tactics were going according to plan as Travis Walker was spat out the back of the pack on the first climb after setting the pace in the first single track. We then hit a long power climb and I soon found myself just off the back of James Reid and was now lying second. I pushed super hard down the next section to open a gap on the guys behind me and to possibly close up on James. After lap 1, I was around 20sec down on James, but was comfortably sitting ahead of 3rd and 4th positions. I held the gap to James at around the same mark until reaching the longest down hill section of the course, and possibly the fastest. As I stood to increase my speed, my gears jumped and this sent me into a 90 degree angle tail spin in the down stroke of my pedalling motion at around 45km/h and all I could do was close my eyes... I hit the deck really hard, but fortunately no damage was done to my bike. I got up and eased off a little to try recover. I soon found Luke Roberts and Gert Heyns on my tail. I jumped onto their wheels and let them tow for the duration of lap 2 and most of lap 3 as I was hoping they could pull me back to James while I tried to regain my rhythm again.
Lap 4 came, I pushed hard down the most technical section of the course, and cut the corner at the bottom a bit fine. A low hanging tree connected my hip, and sent me hurtling off a 2m high bridge. This time it was a big deal. I hit the floor so hard that my bomb (co2 Cartridge)in my shirt pocket burst upon impact, and left my rear wheel with a puncture. I rode the last 2km with a flat rear tyre, and watched my hopes of a podium finish vanish into the distance. I got to the Tech zone upon entering my final lap. I changed my rear wheel in record time and set off to salvage what I could on the final lap. I came in very disappointed, only ending up in 12th position. Definitely not a good day in the office, but a very good opportunity to learn from mistakes while also learning how to cope under extreme pressure, as we are all very competitive and despite being good mates off the track non of us are prepared to give an inch when we are racing against each other.
It was a major disappointment, but its now behind me. Now I've got my sights set for 6 weeks time, for one race. The South African Championships!
Sunday was a really chilled day as I supported my younger brother Kyle at the downhill event and despite him crashing in both his runs he still managed a 4th place overall. Then it was time to kick back and relax with some friends for the remainder of the day before heading back home to Maritzburg this morning.
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