Well its been a looooong time since I did a blog post, I kinda felt a little burnt out on it, but I've come around and have an exciting adventure to share with you all.
To get you all on track, Im going to run you through what has happened the last couple weeks since my last post. I've done a few long rides to kick off the base season, and was invited to the annual Lord of the Chain Rings stage race, which is nestled in the mountains of the Eastern Cape, in a picturesque little town called Hogsback. After hearing only good things about this event I decided to take the opportunity and teamed up with Team Jeep South Africa athlete, Travis Walker. This was a VERY last minute decision, so far so that we only decided that we were racing together the night before we left. I was originally meant to ride with Patrick "Patrice" Belton, but due to his age, I had to do some shuffling around with some partners. We were left with a slight problem though... Kendall was left without a partner now for the mixed race. With T-Minus 12hours until we embarked on our trip, Mark Malherbe (Coffeeberry Momsen) came to the rescue.
Tuesday morning we were up before sparrows fart, packing the car, loading the bikes and getting a few odds 'n ends together. We picked up Mark and hit the road at around 6 hoping to get to Hogsback by around 3:30 - 4:00. This plan went horribly wrong, it seemed that our Garmin had the sole purpose of taking us on GNARLY dirt roads to get to Hogsback. Just before reaching Mthatha, the Garmin had us turn off onto another road, thinking it was a truck route we decided to take it but it eventually lead us onto a dirt road. Being in the spirit of "The Road Trip" we decided to press on with our adventure. The road began getting worse and worse, eventually becoming some serious 4x4 territory. The Jeep got us through the other side unscathed, but needles to say, there were some times we thought we were going to be camping somewhere in the country side of the Eastern Cape. We finally reached our destination, the quaint little town of Hogsback, after about 12hours of being cooped up in the Jeep. We nestled into the local backbacker for the night, before moving into the amazing accommodation supplied by the organizers at the Arminel Hotel & Guest Lodge.
Stage 1:
After an awesome day of relaxation at the Guest Lodge, day 3 of our trip dawned. Ahead of us lay a 61km stage, with 1450m of vertical ascent. We were all a little worried of the main climb of the day, Mitchell's Pass, nicknamed Mitchell's Arse (Mark Malherbe), was a BEAST of a climb, with gradients touching 40% in places. It was a 7.5km relentless drag which would be baking in the sun.
We rolled out at 7:30 with a short neutral zone to keep things under control before turning off the main road. Immediatley a small group of 3 teams managed to separate from the field as we began to roll towards the first piece of single track. After studying the route, the night before, I realized that the single track would be a good place to make our first move. We hit the single track relatively fast and popped out the other side with a massive gap to the next two teams.We decided to take full advantage of the gap, riding hard for short periods of time to continually open the gap. Eventually we had opened our gap up to around 2-3minutes before making our initial descent down Mitchell's Pass. We took the descent down the rutted pass pretty cautiously and once we hit the bottom, decided to take the 20km loop easy before wacking the climb back out the valley at a decent clip. Long story short, we took it a little too easily. Once we started the climb back out the valley we heard that our gap was now around the one minute mark. We kept things cool though, and road at a steady tempo up the climb, by the time we reached the top of the gruelling stretch of "Mitchell's Arse" we had managed to open the gap up to four minutes. After cresting the summit we began to take turns pulling each other, and before we knew it, we were rolling in for stage number one, with a gap of 4:32 over the second team.
So we pulled on the yellow jersey that night at prize giving, and called it a night.
Stage 1 - Coming into take the win
This is the day Trav and I decided to make our own. With a massive 15km climb that ended around 14km from the finish, we knew that is where we would be able to make or break the race. Being the longest of the 3 stages, we felt a little nervous, but felt confident that things would play out well for us.
The neutral zone lead us towards the first short climb, around 3km in. Immediately a small attack came from the right, but didnt last very long. With a tricky single track section approaching I decided to put in a short surge to test the legs of the other teams, it seemed to work, I opened up a small gap but allowed for it to get chased down before putting in a real attack. Travis and I positioned ourselves at the front of the pack and put a small attack in right before the single track. Seeing as how we managed to open up a gap in the single track the day before, we decided to do the same, only this time we would ride at a lower tempo, to allow us to keep fresh while the other teams were chasing back. From then on we made the decision to push harder on the descents, open up a gap, cruise on the flats, recover while the others were chasing, then hammer once we saw they were struggling to bring the gap any closer. This worked. Very well. By the second water table (40km) the gap had opened to five minutes. Thats where the BIG climb started. We took a little time to get into the climb, but we then started to climb at a really good pace. We took a slight wrong turn, but after a minute or two, the locals got us back on track. We continued to make our way up the snaking switch back climb, that lead us out of the valley and back into the clouded pine forest. We made a short stop at the third feed-zone, but soon got under way. We motored up the last little stretch of the climb, crested it and sprinted toward the finish line which was now only around 10km away. The last 10km blew by us and we crossed the line for our second stage win. Now came the wait to see how far behind the second team was. Fortunately for us we had managed to take the win by around 25minutes, giving us the overall lead to us by around 29minutes.
Going into stage three, Trav and I felt pleased to have a comfortable lead over second, but we both knew in the back of our heads, that anything could happen in the third and final stage. To quote Travis, "You can never have too much time in stage racing."
Stage 2 - Neutral Zone
Stage 2 - The start of the BIG Climb
Donning the yellow jersey for the 2nd day in a row, Travis and I felt quietly confident that we could retain it until the end, although both feeling a little uneasy for some unknown reason. Although the stage was meant to be easy
"Oom" Charles Stander and partner, Nikki Smith, lead us out in the neutral zone. Once the lead vehicle pulled off, the racing commenced, furiously. Patrick Belton, Team Jeep South Africa, kicked hard out the feed zone. Having not raced the previous days 77km stage, he was able to set a blisteringly fast pace. Travis and I managed to close the gap to him at around the 5km mark and we were now opening up a sizable gap to the group that had formed behind us. At around the 10km mark we came to a section where course markers lead in two different directions. We opted to follow the markers in which the camera man and spectators were filming and encouraging us to go on. Things then went horribly wrong from there, and 8km later we were back at the finish line.Yup, two spectators had told us to go on the finishing route instead of the main loop of the day. This was exactly what we DID NOT need to happen. After standing around for 10minutes or so we were told to back track the route and get on with our racing. So, needless to say, we raced. HARD. At water table one we got news that we were close on 50minutes behind the leader. There were times in that stage where both Trav and I went into some pretty dark places. I would offer Trav a push and about 45minutes later Trav would be offering me a push. We dug really deep, and by water point three (40km) we were around 20minutes behind the leaders with only 21km to go. But after having raced the previous two days our leg were stating to feel a little flat. Patrick managed to get away from us after I dropped my bottle, and needless to say, we didn't see him again. We then began to climb the final major pass of the climb, and Trav began to go into the hurt locker. I gave him a little push and he soon found his legs again, but then came my turn. My fork went completely solid on "The Rocky Descent," as it had now become known, which sent my hands and biceps into absolute agony. Upon reaching the bottom I was forced to stop for a minute or two as I bundle up into a ball of pain on the side of the road. We eventually got going and started to close into the finish, to both of our delight. After 76km, an extra sixteen more kilometers then we were meant to do, we crossed the line in 7th for the day, 13minutes behind the eventual winners of stage 3.
Thankfully we had won the Lord of the Chainrings. After a hard fought day in the saddle we had managed to win the overall race by just under an hour over second place. It turned out that they had also gone wrong at the same place we had gone wrong.
The weekend also brought another medal into our household. My girlfriend, Kendall Ryan, teamed up with good friend, Mark Malherbe, for the mixed category, and after winning day one of the race and gaining the overall lead, they suffered terrible mechanicals on the second and third stage. With a snapped derailleur cable on stage two and a pretzelled rear disk rotor on day three, the soldiered through to finish second to Hanlie Kotze and her partner!
A huge thanks to all involved who made our trip to this race possible. To Max Cluer for pulling some strings, to Jeep South Africa for the awesome Jeep Cherokee, to Travis Walker who was an unbelievable team mate and friend, both on and off the bike and to Andrew Hugo and his entire team for the amazing organization and coordination of the event. It was an absolutely brilliant experience!
Stay tuned for some videos of our trip!!
Until then B
Stage win #2
Overall Gold medal
