Amashova weekend

Asishova Mountain bike event:

This past weekend I travelled down to Natal for the Amashova Mountain bike and road event on Saturday and Sunday respectively.

The weather forecast predicted heavy rain on the weekend and I thought my preparations were adequate... I had my mud tyres on, packed my rain jacket but still it wasn’t nearly enough for what I was about to experience at the MTB race on Saturday!

The event started in misty rain and very cold conditions. As we left the start I was positioned behind a few riders, concentrating hard on following their wheels. Then suddenly we went onto an open stretch of field without any tracks to ride on. There were only confused riders heading in all directions - we had gone the wrong way!

The leading quad bike that was missing at the start came to our rescue and took us back to the race route. In the meantime the rest of the 70km participants were already out on the ‘correct’ course which left us to ride back up and past them.

Samantha Oosthuisen (Karsten Cycles) took the lead during the first part of the event with me lying in 2nd position.

Unfortunately around 20km into the event, I had to stop to fix my flat rear tyre.
Once my tyre was fixed I got back on my bike and started my chase back to the girls in the front.
With all the rain some of the route markings got lost and I ended up passing some riders a few times. It felt very unfair and demoralising to chase very hard, only to catch up to the same guys over and over again.

My last 10km turned into a nightmare! As I got onto the last section of singletrack, the trail was like a mud bath! The mud just stuck to my bike and tyres, which eventually even caused my wheels to stop turning.
I had to stop every few meters and try to remove some of the mud, just to get my wheels turning again. Carrying my bike was also not an option because it got too heavy to pick up.
If I was told this might happen to my bike on muddy trails I wouldn’t have believed it. It was crazy and frustrating with the end being so close but not knowing how in the world I was going the get there….

They made the route very challenging, climbing mostly on dirt routes and then descending on technical twisting singletrack. You never really got an opportunity to rest or stop pedalling. With the downhill sections on singletrack it also took longer than usual and this made the event even more gruelling. I managed to finish in 5th place with a time of 5:27min.

Amashova Road event:

This year more than 300 girls stood on the start line of the 107 km Amashova Classic.
As we left the start in Pietermaritzburg, heading towards Durban, we encountered the first challenges of the event. The route rolled over 3 consecutive climbs which caused the field to split and only around 30 ladies were left in the front.
The big teams (MTN, Nashua, Cycle lab) kept the racing interesting throughout the entire event as they consistently tried to launch attacks off the front of the bunch.

The second challenge of the event came around 40km from the finish when we had to go over another series of hills. This reduced the leading bunch to a small group of around 15 girls and I was happy to still be up in front after the previous day’s outing.

As we got onto the highway with 10km left to the finish I just couldn’t keep up with the pace anymore. The previous day’s effort finally caught up with me.
On one of the drags Cashandra Slingerland (MTN), Lizanne Naude (Cycle lab), Carla van den Merwe (Nashua) and I (Konica Minolta) got left behind and we were forced to chase. Unfortunately we couldn’t get back in the final few kilometres and we finished a few seconds behind the first bunch.

Jenny Stenerhagdt (Alpha Pharm) won the sprint for 1st place in an exciting finale.