The second leg of the MTN Marathon series took place at Barberton High School on Saturday 29th of January.
Since this event is also a UCI event, the Marathon Elite women were set off independently, 5min after the Ultra marathon men. The ladies field was once again very competitive as it attracted international riders over and above all the top South African ladies. The level of woman’s cycling is definitely improving rapidly in this country, which is great to see.
For 2011 Team Bizhub has also grown more on the mountain biking side as we now have a total of 5 girls (Candice Needling, Caitlin de Wet, Ischen Stopfort, Nicci Grobler and myself) in the team who will mainly be focussing on MTB.
We left the start line under a clear sky and the Team-MTN/Qhubeka pair of Yolande Speedy and Ezster Erdelyi decided to put the hammer down in the neutral zone already (so much for having an ‘easy’ roll through town) which saw only a small group of girls reaching the bottom of the first and only major climb on the day where the race ‘officially’ started.
Here I settled in my own manageable pace with Samantha Oosthuisen (Else Kaarstens Cycles) a few meters behind me. Half way up the climb I made contact with my team mate Caitlin de Wet and the two of us stayed together for another few kilometres. I am not sure when Caitlin decided to rather ride her own pace, but as I rode up to Mariska Strauss (Contego) near the top of the climb Caitlin wasn’t with me anymore. Employing some road tactics, I decided to just stay with Mariska and hope that Caitlin will join us again as she was very close to us at that stage.
Mariska on the other hand was determined to stay ahead and this led to the two of us continuing on in pursuit of the leaders. Once it was clear that Caitlin was not going to reach us I, started helping Mariska and we set a high pace as we raced on through the beautiful Mountainlands Nature Reserve and the Greenstone Wildlife Estate on the other side of the mountain. I really thought we would ride up to some of the other girls in front as we both were pushing hard on the pedals at this stage.
The last 5km of the route took us onto some ‘Cross Country’ single track. Going into it I was still with Mariska but her cross country experience left me behind with 2km to go to the finish line.
It was an aggressive race until the end as Yolande Speedy (Team MTN/Qhubeka) was in the lead throughout the race and then in the final kilometres she took a wrong turn somewhere and sadly had to settle for second place behind her team mate Eszter Erdelyi (Team MTN,Qhubeka) with Ariane Luthi rounding off the podium.
Ischen Stopforth was on her way to finish 4th but unfortunately went down on the technical single track near the end. Luckily Candice Neetling was also having an excellent ride herself and managed to secure the 4th place for the team with Ischen rounding out the top 5.
Results:
1st Eszter Erdelyi (Team MTN/Qhubeka)
2nd Yolande Speedy (Team MTN/Qhubeka)
3rd Ariane Luithi (Contego)
4th Candice Neetling (Team Bizhub)
5th ISchen Stopforth (Team Bizhub)
6th Karien van Jaarsveld (USN)
7th Mariske Strauss (Contego)
8th Yolandi du Toit (Team Bizhub)
9th Caitlin de Wet (Team Bizhub)
10th Samatha Oosthuisen (Else Kaarsten Cycles)
This coming weekend I will be competing at the SA Road Championships and EP Herald Road race on Saturday and Sunday.
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