The 3 day event covering a distance of 300km took place in the beautiful holiday destination of Knysna. It is not the only reason the town is well known for but also as one of the places which has spectacular mountain biking trails to offer and during the event it was just once again confirmed.
All the stages started and finished at the Waterfront in Knysna, which made the tour, accommodation wise, a bit more comfortable not having to move around at all over the 3 days.
I partnered up with Catherine Williamson for the event. The last time we raced together was at Wine2Whales in 2010. It was my first time taking part in this event and as I haven’t raced alongside Catherine for a long time I was looking forward to start the ‘unknown’ adventure.
Day one’s 100km started off at a blistering pace as everyone was full of adrenaline and eagerness to start racing. The first part of the race took us on a long steady climb. Here Cath and I managed to move into the lead as we gained time on the other woman’s teams.
Around 15km the whole front group including Cath and I went the wrong way. By the time we found our way back onto the race route we were quite far behind and had to work our way up to the front of the race again. The latter was much more challenging as you get stuck on the single track behind slower riders and have to wait for more open section to pass.
One quarter into the race Cath and I managed to regain or lead and continued pushing hard until the very end. We crossed the finish line in 1st place with our teammates Nicci Grobler & Leana de Jager in 2nd place and the international pairing of Cathy Crabbe and Nina Hind in 3rd place.
Stage 2 was the hardest of all three stages covering a distance of 115km and more than 2000m of climbing. The start was quite hard as we started at the bottom of a steep concrete climb. Half way up this climb the route forked and with no arrows pointing either way we, together with the front group went left down the hill instead of keeping right all the way to the top.
This meant we had to climb all the way back up to the top, finding ourselves around half way down the field and had to work our way to the front again.
While working our way back to the front we caught up with our teammates Leana and Nicci around 30km.
As it was a very long stage the four of us decided to stick together and help each other to reach the finish line. As the kilometres ticked by we eventually formed a type of survival group of around 10 riders and completed the stage together in a time of 5h42min.
The camaraderie during the stage was quite nice as everyone was going through the same pain and mental suffering. It’s a hard feeling when you’ve been on the bike for 4 hours already and you think you must have covered 90km by now and when you look down at your speedometer and it shows that you’ve only covered 60km. Then it start sinking in slowly that you still have 55km to go but you don’t want to believe it yet and rather want to blame your speedometer for reading wrong or being broken so you ask the rider next to you “how far do we still have to go?”. Then he or she gives you that smile of, I know how you feel and say it is still 55km to go...
On day 3 we had a neutralized start as we were lead out of Knysna on the main road to George.
Within the neutralized section Catherine punctured which forced us to stop and fix the rear flat wheel. We lost around 10min but our spirit was still high and therefore we road as hard as we could in attempt to join the front of the race again.
It wasn’t 10km later and we were stranded with another flat tyre. Luckily our team mechanic, Conrad Venter, was waiting for us within 1km at the water and service station. As it was Cath’s back wheel again she wanted me to ride ahead to let Conrad know what was happening.
When Cath made her way to the water and service point Conrad quickly helped her to fix the wheel. We lost more time but all we could do was to continue racing hard and make the best of the situation. Within 15km from the finish line it was my turn to get a flat tyre on the last rocky descent of the course. Although we had bad luck during the stage we also had some good luck as Conrad was waiting at the bottom of the descent at last servicing station.
Cath and I have used up all our tyres and bombs which we have carried with us and begging wasn’t an option as riders were passing me too fast on the descent. All I could do was to start running down with by bike to where Conrad was waiting while Cath went ahead to fetch a pump and tube in the meantime.
Eventually Cath and I made our way to the finish line but our 15min lead at the start of the stage ended in a 30min deficit.
Luckily our teammates Nicci Grobler and Leana de Jager were riding very well throughout the 3 days and kept the overall victory within the team with Cath and me finishing 2nd overall at the end.
Final Results:
1st Leana de Jager & Nicci Grobler
2nd Catherine Williamson & Yolandi du Toit
3rd Cathy Crabbe & Nina Hind
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