skinny wheel racing part 3 -Road Rash and an Ass Grating

Ok... so the Shova didn't exactly plan out how I hoped it would...


Being off the bike for close on a month, with the odd race thrown in, I was pretty nervous to see what the countries top roadies had to throw at me. Surprisingly I felt pretty strong, and definitely felt that I could make it to the bunch sprint at the soccer stadium in Durbs.

The race started off fantastically. I managed to secure myself in the bunch and pretty soon I found myself contending with the top guns... and I felt GREAT!!! We peaked over the notorious Fox Hill, which winds its way out of Maritzburg, which lead to the attacks coming hard and fast. I was able to react, and soon found myself with a very small select group of riders. As we turned onto the Eston road which makes its way towards Camperdown the race took a completely different direction. We had a full on block head wind. That meant only one thing.... GUTTER = NO SLIP STREAMING... thats where things stopped going my way! The group swung across the road to prevent us being able to slip stream the person in front of us. I found myself sitting in 2nd, so I still had a small amount of the slip from the rider in front of me, then.... the next thing I knew I was grating my butt away on the tarmac at 60kph. The tar that was on the yellow line dropped away to the side which forced me onto some dodgy gravel. I managed to get back onto the 'good stuff,' but was then clipped by a rider passing me. I came down with the most disgusting sound of grinding carbon and aluminium in the process of being mangled, not to mention the smell of my what must have been my skin being peeled off and left on teh road surface. After sliding for what seemed forever I eventually came to a halt. My bibs were shredded, my glove of my left hand, disintegrated, my shoes were ground down to a fine carbon dust, my handle bars and pedals had been mangled by the rough surface. The bodily injuries were quite painful. My left cheek of my butt was virtually non existent, despite me flashing it to everybody from here on as there were no bibs to cover up any longer. My elbow had taken the full brunt of the initial crash, and my fore arm had lost half the skin, which, by the way was still sizzling in the road.

I jumped up to try and limit my losses, I fixed my chain and began the most intense chase of my life. It doesn't happen often, but I literally pushed myself to the point where I could taste blood. I eventually made contact with the bunch when we got to the bridge crossing the N3 at Camperdown. But I was definitely feeling the effects of the chase. As we approached the last major climb of the race the attacks came like no tomorrow, I simply couldn't react. I had to sit back and try keep my cool. Luckily the gap didn't grow too drastically and I managed to make contact with the rear of the group, with the help of some reckless descending down into Botha's Hill. But again, the attacks came which equalled the end of my day, and my chances of a good result went down the tube.

From there I decided to just make the remainder of my race a good start into my base training, so I just chilled for the final 20km or so. It was really a bummer not to get the result I was hoping for... but hey... thats racing and that's the way the cookie crumbled at the end of the day. I ended the day with a really good lunch and a fruit smoothie before heading back up the hill to Maritzburg.

A huge thanks must go out to Clint and Ollie Olsen for arranging a new shifter in time to replace the one that snapped the previous week at Midmar / Notts. You guys were fantastic and thanks for all the encouragement and advice.

Now comes my base, starting on Tuesday and hopefully a good result at the 94.7 is possible!

Wish me luck
peace\


making the junction to the bunch after my crash

Skinny Wheel Action - Round 2

So this weekend, after 3 weeks completely off the bike (apart from high performance testing)since racing the Hill 2 Hill, I decided to try and mix it up with the boys who race the skinny wheeled, light weight things they call road bikes. With the Amashova only one week away, I thought it'd be a really good opportunity to race the Midmar-Notts to test the waters and see how the legs would react.

We were up at sparrows fart to get to the typical early morning start of all road races. We arrived and went straight to register and get my bike rolled in (to have the gearing checked-Juniors race with lighter gear ratios than that of elites and older). Then came the warm up... with the cold morning conditions it was pretty hard to try and get warmed up, so I made the best of what I had and rode around in a big circle. Then came race time, at least it was delayed by around 20 or so minutes, which meant the start was at around 07:30, still a tad earlier than most mountain bike races.

The juniors started with the elites and under 23 riders, which meant only one thing... the racing was going to be hard and fast. With names like Chris Jennings, Dave Leiman,Andrew Warr and Myles van Musschenbroek things were not going to be easy. As we left the dam the pace stayed pretty moderate, with no one getting away from the bunch. By the time we got to the main climb of the race, the bunch was still very much intact. A few of the top riders came to the front and blew the bunch to pieces. At the steepest part of the climb I saw a chance to try and make a break, so I took the leap and made my move... I managed to get a good gap and felt like I was super humanly strong, until I sat down to get into a rhythm... that when the wheels fell off. The remainder of the bunch caught and blew me out the back, along with another rider. Fortunately I recovered really quickly and managed to time trial my way onto the bunch again.

The lead bunch was now around 15 strong, and we were now on the long gradual climb which winds its way all the way to Nottingham Road (25-30km long). The bunch continued to whittled down and only a few of the top riders were left with the ever increasing pace, riders were being dropped off the back all the time. Myles, a fellow junior rider, put in a really big effort at Michaelhouse and managed to get a gap of around 10 seconds on the bunch. Dave Leiman bridged the gap, which definitely made the bunch react with a chase. The gap slowly began to come down, and eventually the junction was made, almost instantly a counter attack went off the side with Dave Leiman. Chris Jennings, Mike Aidey and I went with. In the pandemonium I heard the most diabolical sound come from behind me... I looked back and saw a rider hit the deck hard. Unfortunately it was Myles who'd made a small mistake which lead him to practice some high speed bush diving.

The bunch was now down to 7, with me being the only junior present, so things were definitely looking very good.
Then to my amazement, with about 47km to go, my rear shifter snapped clean off which meant I only had one gear to push to the finish. I tried to dig deep, but I couldn't hold onto the disgustingly hard pace that Chris was now setting on the rough road just outside Notties heading towards the N3 and I was spat out the back of the bunch now only 4 riders strong.

And so began my 47 odd kilometer time trial back to the Midmar dam.

Luckily I managed to catch one of the other riders who had lost contact of the lead group as well. We began to really work well together, with me pushing on the flats and downhills, and him helping me on the up's. Eventually we arrived back at Midmar, with cramp nipping at my heels. I'd managed to make up a place crossing the line in 6th place from the elite starting batch and was the 1st junior home about four and a half minutes ahead of the next junior, a result I was really stoked with.

Now comes Amashova and then I will be back on the bike to start my base training in preparation for the 2011 season !!!

2010 CSA High Performance Camp - Umhlanga- Two Days of PAIN

Wow what an amazing weekend! MTBSA as well as CSA (Cycling South Africa) put together an awesome High performance camp for the top Juniors and Elite athletes of South Africa, and was held at the AWESOME Umhlanga Medical Center near Gateway.

Needless to say, the two days were single handedly the most disgustingly hard days I've ever had on a bike. This was of course due to the fact that we had a 40km TT on the Computrainer as well as a VO2 Max test and Spin scan test. The 40km TT was definitely the hardest, each athlete was continuously trying to better the previous athletes time over the 40km distance. The VO2 testing was a different kind of disgusting all together, with the power gradually increasing on the Computrainer, the thought in the back of all our minds was, "O BOY!!!!" Unfortunately the computer which was monitoring my test switched off near the end, so I was unable to get a perfectly accurate result.

But nevertheless this specific HP camp was by far the most well organised and professional camp I have been on to date. The hotel we stayed in was absolutely fantastic, the food was spectacular and the level professionalism was at the highest level. With people such as Jeroen Swart, Tim Goodenough, Johann Wykerd and the entire team it definitely made the Camp very worth while and extremely thorough.

A huge thanks needs to go out to CSA, MTBSA, Johann Wykerd and Jeroen Swart and his team! Without you guys it wouldn't be possible to run such a tight shift program!


VO2 Max Test = Death