SA XCO #1 - Arno du Toit

After a couple of smaller races to get the season rolling nicely, it was time for us to load our Dogma xc's into the trailer and hit the road down to the mother city, for the first leg of the national xco series.

We arrived at Willowbridge Thursday afternoon and after having lunch while staring at the very spectator friendly course, we went out for a couple of easy laps to find out what was in store for us. All round I enjoyed the course, nothing serious to stress about with  some really fun sections.

Saturday morning I woke up to the sound of raindrops on the roof. It didn't bother me, according to accuweather it would only be 2ml and stop at 9am. We were only racing at 12. Ofcourse the rain never stopped and conditions only got worse as the day went on. Luckily the continental X-King is a perfect all round tire so I had no worries to change equipment before the start.

Must say lining up behind  guys like Florian Vogel, Ralf Näf and a couple other international riders had my nerves going. The start was messy. Got to love sprinting full gas with elbows touching through mud for a single track. I got away nicely, but some favourites were caught napping.

My first lap felt good, but with the excitment I over cooked it slightly. I battled to settle down and couldn't get into a rhythm and lost some time. I got it back together and managed to regain focus and from there on it felt really comfortable. The longer Ritchey stem I decided to use worked like a bomb. My position on the bike and the handeling felt perfect.

I started catching riders from about the halfway mark. The combination of good coaching from PYcycling and the High5 supplements was definately working well. After a grueling 8laps, I finished 5th u23 men. Even though I was a little bit off the pace, I felt that I could maintain a steady pace all the way to the end. Always a good foundation to build on.

Looking forward to some good racing

Arno