The rain rolled in around Wednesday and poured on and off for the next couple of days. This made practice really tricky as we needed to brave the conditions in order to ride the rock gardens, but at the same time we didn't want to damage or hurt ourselves in a crash that could occur in the slick conditions. Practice went off really well, with no major crashes or incidents. I was feeling really confident on the new Ellsworth, despite the horrendous conditions. The Truth SST.2 handled the conditions unbelievably and had really left a good impression on me leading up to the race.
Race day dawned, and yet more and more rain fell. With an 11am start, my morning was rather chilled. I arrived at the venue and was greeted by a sight of absolute carnage! The riders were absolutely covered in mud, bikes were trashed and spectators resembled drowned rats more than human beings. The parts of the track that I could see from the car park looked like a war zone. The thought that sprung to mind was, "This is gonna be tough... very tough"
By being seeded on the front row it meant that I had a really clean line straight into the first climb, which was right after the start. Right from the gun I went hard to get into the first single track in a good position. Behind me there was utter chaos. Arno du Toit and I were the only two riders who managed to ride up the first climb, everyone else was forced to unclip and start running. The front end of the field was soon whittled down to 4 riders, Gert Heyns, Arno du Toit, Luke Roberts and myself.
The conditions were terrible, with many parts of the course being unrideable. I put in a really hard effort on the longest climb of the course, which lead to the bunch whittling down to Gert and I with Luke a few seconds back. Gert and I managed to put a gap between us and the chasers and began to battle it out for the lead. Unfortunately I took an extremely heavy crash in the biggest rock garden of the course, leaving Gert to ride away into the distance. I remounted and began my pursuit back to Gert. With some bruised confidence, I chickened out of the bull runs on the last lap, which allowed Gert to open up an even bigger gap. In the end I managed to roll in for 2nd, around 2minutes down on Gert.
Congrats to Gert on his result! A very well earned win!
A huge thanks to Ellsworth for such an awesome machine! With each ride the bike feels better and better! Another big thanks needs to go out to new sponsor, Powasol! Their cleaning products and chain lubes were UNBELIEVABLE in the conditions I was faced with on the weekend! Thanks Guys!
Now comes a very easy week in prep for my big one! The 2011 Pietermaritzburg MTB World Cup!
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