National MTN Marathon #5 Gravel Travel – Stephan Reyneke

Gravel Travel is one of the favourites in the MTN National MTB Series; a race with beautiful scenery and magnificent trails. This is what real mountain biking is about; each challenging climb gets rewarded with amazing flowing single track. It is one of the races with the most purpose built single track… If I have to describe MTN Gravel travel in short I would say it’s like a 75km cross country race!

My race

Diemersfontein Wine & Country Estate was the venue for the 2013 Gravel Travel. It was hard racing from the gun, we hit it straight out the wine estate onto the first big climb called “The Wall”. The steep climb from the start made it easy to spot the stronger riders.Contego was the team putting the hammer down from the start.Soon I found myself giving it my all to hang onto the back of the leading group of threeContego riders as well as Robert Sim, Tom Ettlich and Patrick Belton (Team Jeep). Going onto the first technical single track, it was clear that GertHeins (Contego) and his fellow riders,AdriaanLouw and JurgensUys had home ground advantage. The main split came at about 25km into the race after a long twisty descent. The threeContego riders and Patrick seem to have gotten away.I was on a solo mission to try and keep the time gaps minimal. I had to strike a balance between taking too many risksor possibly losing more time on the leaders. I was on the chase for my entire race.I was never exactly sure how much time I’d lost on the leaders.I ended up crossing the line 6th overall and 5th u23. I came in 63 seconds behind 4th place, which just shows exactly how important it is to race hard till the end!