Monday 8 October 2012

Mankele 3 Towers - Paul Cordes


The past couple of weeks has been quite eventful for the Pycycling gang! The action started last weekend with Amy winning the Single Speed World Champs and earning herself the famous tattoo “trophy” but she will tell us all about it in a separate insert.

To start with last weekend several of our riders packed in their camping gear and headed down to the Isuzu 3 Towers stage race. There were 2 events over the 3 days, firstly the race where there were 2 days of 80km racing and then the Challenge which the first 2 days were 40km stages but both ending with a 50km day 3.

I teamed up with Arno for our 2nd stage race together with a goal of top 5 overall. This event is fairly technical which we felt suited us well. The organizers put huge effort into building and maintaining amazing trails around the area which is a great test for both man and machine. During this event one is forever diving into some amazing little bush tunnel or a beautiful piece of forest single track and I was thankful for Rudy Project glasses being photo chromatic so I could see perfectly in this ever changing environment. What they also have at their disposal are climbs – kilometers and kilometers worth!!! Somehow I managed to forget about these from the past but after day 1 I was reminded of what was really going to make the racing.

We rode nice and steady throughout the 3 days and kept very consistent but just lacked the punch to truly mix it with the top guys. We finished 5th behind Gawie and Phillip which we felt was a pretty good effort. Have to say that our USN supplements did their job and I am always so grateful that they have such a wide range to rely on to get us through all the phases of mtb racing!

Our other members had some great success as well and I was very proud of our elite ladies Angie and Petru who were doing their first ever stage race and managed a very creditable 3rd place overall. Then our junior mixed team of Marcel and Jessica (@slab) finished 2nd in the Challenge which was also a fantastic effort! Vet racer Francios led his team mate through the mountains for a fantastic 3rd in cat. And our “dads” team finished their first ever stage race making their own personal goal which was exciting to see!

Other parts of the country we had Catherine Colyn getting a double podium down in the cape at the Engen Dynamic Cycle Challenge on both the mtb and road race. She won both of her events as well as a very high overall finish position. We have been seeing a steady improvement from her this season which has been very exciting!

Amy headed to Voriberg where she took 1st lady and 4th overall showing again her good form!

Then Yolande after being selected only a few weeks ago to race in the World Marathon Champs giving her very limited preparation time headed over to France with the S.A. team to have some fun in the mud!! She did fantastically finishing 13th in the world (only 1 place off her pb) proving that she still is a huge force to recon with both in xco as well as xcm! It was a relief to me to hear that despite the mud her GT Zaskar ran perfectly and the Conti X-Kings kept her upright which is always first prize! I think Yolande and I can be very crateful for our CycleOps Powertaps so we could really put in some much focused training making the very most of our time to get into some great shape!

We are super proud of every ones performances this past weekend and look forward to a lot of exciting racing to come!

Next weekend we will have a few of our riders down at the Crater Cruise as well as Neville and Yolande will be racing at the Cape Pioneer Trek and wish them all the best of luck!!

Till then keep the rubber side down!

Paul

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