Monday 20 April 2015

Ashburton Investment National series #3 Clarens

On Friday the 17th the cream of South-African cycling all headed to Clarens in the heart of the Free State for the 3rd round of the Ashburton Investment National MTB series. following the weather man throughout the week I prepared for a cold weekend, and it was cold but not as cold as I thought so I am rather happy with that.

Saturday was race day and it was a early morning wake up to get into town to be at the start line at 7am for rider call up and to start my 3rd ever ultra at 7;15am. The Ultra distance(110-120km) is still a big learning school for me and I take a lot of positives out of every one and try to improve myself at the next one. looking at the results from my previous ones there is an improvement, starting of in January at Meerendal where I got a 22nd place , then Sabie with a 20th and now at Clarens I got myself a 17th place. I am happy with the improvement but there is still a lot to learn



The pace was not to fast in the early stages of the race as everyone tried to get there legs warmed up for the remaining 118km. It didn't take long for some of the top guys to pick up the pace as we headed for the first big climb of the day at 20km, Before the climb we had some action in the bunch as a "Rooibok" headed straight into us and jumped the one rider of his bike and the rest just missed the rest of us. With the adrenaline pumping we started with the climb and the guys where hitting it up there and the gaps started to appear. I found myself in a group with four other riders and we worked our way to the BIG climb of the day at 60km called the Titanic.



It was n nice route and well marked and it was not long before we arrived at the "Titanic". As soon as we got to the bottom of the climb our group of 5 broke down and it was everyone for himself. I did not push myself to the limit up there knowing there is still about 55km to go after this and I worked myself up there. The single track on the other side was amazing, we went down for about 8km, to go back into town to start our second loop. 

The second loop or the last 45km was a different ball game. It started of nicely with some open district roads leading us to the next big thing on route that was called some slick rocks, it was nasty rocks and I completely lost my rhythm up and down the  rocks. After I dragged myself over all of them it was the last 20km back into town. I regrouped myself a bit and finished another ultra in 17th place.

Next Ultra marathon is 6 Jun at Van Gaalen (SA Champs) I am looking forward to try and improve my position there. There is some races before that like the winter Fast one, walkerville Classic and the start of the Nissan Trailseeker series in Gauteng.

Thank you to everyone out there who helped and supported me , I really appreciate it. and a big thank you to all my sponsors for making this possible

see you all at the next race
Be safe
Pierre


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