It’s been quite a busy week of riding, racing and travelling for me and the Bizhub ladies cycling team.

On Friday (4 Feb) I travelled down to Port Elizabeth for SA Road Championships and the EP Herald Road race. Once there the plans truly changed overnight. The organisers of SA Road Champs couldn’t decide the night before whether the route was ‘safe’ enough to race on the next day or if they should cancel it instead.

Luckily my team had brought my mountain bike along for African Continental Championships which meant I didn’t have to wonder if I was going to be able to race the next day. I just changed my focus to the EP Herald MTB race and got on with the job in hand.

I was really happy to be able to do the MTB race which took place at Addo Elephant National Park just outside of PE. It was much harder than expected. It looked like fairly flat terrain driving to the park but proved to be the exact opposite during the race. The scenic route was very interesting as there were gradual gravel climbs through fertile citrus plantations, technical single track up and down hiking trails and fast adrenaline pumping downhill jeep track. The race was won by Swiss rider Ariane Luthi (Contego team) with my team mate Ischen Stopforth in 2nd place and me in 3rd place to round out the podium.

On Sunday the 6th of February the team took part in EP Herald road race. Catherine Williams had a great ride and managed to better her 3rd place result from last year to finish in 2nd place. Next year she is sure to bag the win!

At the end of the weekend, despite the chaos around SA’s, our team was happy to leave PE with great results (I can also add that our junior on the team, Monique Gerber, won 2 Gold medals at SA’s in the road race and time trial respectively).

Caitlin and I travelled from PE to Stellenbosch on Monday (7 Feb) to take part in the African Continental Champs held at Jonkershoek this coming weekend.

Until next time,