MTUNZINI BIG 5 MTB CLASSIC

RESULT: 1st OVERALL

Sunday welcomed the mountain bikers with spectacular weather for a winters morning. By the start of the race it was already very warm and everyone was looking forward to a hot days racing.

The 50km classic started off with a short neutral zone along the tar roads of the Zini estate and we were quickly unleashed onto the dirt roads around the estate. It started off with only myself and Nick Porteous willing to do any work on the front, so I knew with this being a fairly flat and fast course I had to try and split things up early. On the first climb of the day I put in a small attack to try whittle down the size of the group. We were now down to a group of 5 riders.

Unfortunately it was still only Nick who was willing to help on the front so up the next steep muddy climb I tried another attack and this time I got away on my own, so I set about maintaining a hard pace to try break up the chase group. After some time I could see there was a lone cyclist chasing me and it was Dave Leiman who also races for THULE South Africa as a mountain biker. I figured it would be smarter to work with Dave rather than attempt to stay out front alone, so I sat up and we then set about working together to get out of sight from the chasers.

It was a very enjoyable ride from then and we worked well together to maintain the gap. Coming into the last 6km we entered some fantastic ‘mangrove’ single track and I used this as my opportunity to make a break from Dave. I pushed extremely hard through the tight twisting single track and arrived at the finish with the win and a gap of 4mins over Dave, Nick Porteous came in for 3rd, a good effort after being on his own most of the way.

I thoroughly enjoyed myself at the event and look forward to the rest of the BIG 5 MTB series.

GREYTOWN MTB CLASSIC

RESULT: 1st OVERALL

I was very close to not racing on Sunday as I had been on Anti-Biotics the whole week for an infection and just for good measure as I stopped the tablets on Fri I started to get sick. Thankfully it was just a head cold and by Sunday morning I wasn’t feeling to bad so decided to give the race a go.

We arrived in Greytown to be greeted by very gloomy, cold and rainy weather. It was going to be another muddy and slippery race.

The race got off to a fairly conservative start and no one was to eager to push the pace in the cold conditions. On the first slight incline I lifted the pace a bit and 3 other riders went with me. My legs were feeling really good so on the next climb I surged again and it was down to just Andrew Warr and myself at the front.

We had a great time out front in the mud ooh’ing and aaah’ing at each others close calls and saves. We had both gone for fast rolling tyres rather then wet weather tyres, which was making things very entertaining. After the long slog up to the top of the mountain we were rewarded with some amazing single track along the side of the mountain and the ride home was pretty fast.

About 5kms out from the finish the cat and mouse games started with Andrew trying a few attacks up some of the climbs but my legs were good and I managed to stay on his wheel. I wanted to wait till the end to make my move. I lead out of the last single track, kept the pace high and turned into the final straight in front and kicked hard managing to cross the line in 1st.

It felt great to win a MTB classic again and Im having such a good time at the races so going to try fit as many as I can into my training plan.