Gauteng Provincial XCO #1 - Arno du Toit

After a very last minute bike build Friday and no real time for a test ride it was time to line up for my first XCO race of the season. Not ideal, but very exciting! I couldn't wait to not only ride, but race the new Pinarello Dogma XC machine. As usual the elite - u/23 men only started just before midday. Great performances from the rest of our team all round through the morning added some extra positive pressure before the start.

 I started my warm up rather early just to try and get the hang of the new stallion. Tiaan checked the tire pressure of my Continental rubber and it all felt good! In the start chute I chose not to stand on the front row with the idea to fight my way through as the whistle blew, some starting practice for bigger races to come. I went into the single track comfortably in the top 5. Soon I managed to get into 2ndspot, the pace was pretty easy but I was happy to sit there and get the hang of the bike first, before going cowboy. We came through after lap one in a group of 4 riders, with my biggest worry being Ben-Melt even though we were not racing in the same category. The first quarter of the track was mostly steep short climbing and about halfway up this section on the 2nd lap I made my move.

I managed to open a fairly descent gap, but I was not surprised to see Melt following my move as I looked back. Over all I enjoyed the feel of the new bike, but there were some minor setup issues. I had about 10 seconds on Melt, till we hit lap 4. As we started the climb, my gears were jumping. At first I thought the gear cable slipped so I tried fine tuning it a little, not the easiest to do while climbing a 20% single track hill. I soon realised this wasn't the problem and that I had to stop and tighten my rear Ritchey wheel. Somehow it came loose, but unfortunately I only had myself to blame for this one. The tables turned and suddenly I was under pressure chasing an old skinny guy. Unfortunately his diesel engine only got going at about that point in the race and he started pulling away slowly. My legs were dead. Sort of expected this after running around Epic Cycle Shop the whole of Friday building my bike. Never the less I took a High5 Energygel, a big sip of their caffeine Sports drink and kept on fighting.

In the end it wasn't enough to close the gap, but I managed to hold onto second over all and 1st u/23. I also raced with the light weight Powertap hub and gathered some interesting data with the CycleOps Joule GPS.

Once again the support from the whole a[s]g PYcycling family was amazing and this made for a really fun day at Thaba trails.

Arno