Illovo Eston MTB challenge



The event was held in Eston, Pietermaritzburg. With rain pouring down throughout the whole of Saturday, we were in for a tough challenge.

I was surprised by the number of woman that turned up to participate in the 60km Marathon event despite the challenging weather conditions.

It was quite a spectacular sight as we left the start line. With all the rain falling on the open trails it was very slippery and one only saw girls sliding across the trail from one side to the other.

It was only for a short 200m section and riding on to more compact ground Speedy used her technical skills to open a small gap on the rest of us. The Queen of the mountain was situated only 3km into the event, which made the racing aggressive from the start.

Samantha Oosthuisen made the first move to try and bridge the gap to Speedy. I reacted immediately and went with her. We caught up to Yolande 1km before the Queen of the mountain. At this stage the pace was uncomfortably high for me, and I decided to rather back off a bit. I didn’t want to dig to deep at the start and then blow up only a few kilometres later.

Tanya Raats bridged up to me and the two of us rode together on the first flat and windy part of the course.
As the climbing started Tanya was unable to keep up with me as I chased hard to catch up with the two frontrunners (Samantha and Speedy).

The mud on the trails made the event truly challenging and I had to jump off a few times because of chain suck. My gears also suffered in the muddy conditions and it was a challenge just to keep the wheels turning smoothly.
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Luckily I had mud tires on, which meant the riding on technical trails was made a bit easier. I actually enjoyed the route in the wet conditions. It meant your approach to a situation had to be calculated. You had to think how to handle it without slipping or where to ride to get the most traction in the mud and on top of that still concentrate on pushing your pedals as hard as possible.

After leaving Tanya around 10km into the race I was left to ride alone throughout the remainder of the event. It was hard at times being alone with no one in sight behind or in front of me, never quite sure if I was still on the correct route while doing a 3:30h effort.

As I approached the 5km to go sign, I was completely finished. I don’t know how I reached the finish line, but I eventually did crossing the line in 3rd place.

Results for the day
1st Yolande Speedy
2nd Samantha Oosthuisen
3rd Yolandi du Toit
4th Shawna Thunder