After a hard week of training and a long heat wave, I felt pretty excited to go check out and have some fun on the XCO course for the 2nd KZN round to be held on Saturday. The course was really awesome with plenty climbing, around 190m of climbing per lap but what goes up must go down and the descents were awesome. The course was a bit loose, which I enjoyed and with a few really cool jumps it made it a lot of fun.
The amount of laps we were supposed to do got reduced to 4 laps, but the heat on the day was crazy making the course even tougher. My race was at 11am, so we all lined up with elites first, u23's second, juniors third and youth riders fourth, meaning I was one group from the back of the field. The start was a mess with a rider falling over causing a bunch up and chaos. I managed to get going again now quite far back, so I was on the chase. Up the first hill I got myself into about 13th overall and remained there until the course opened up again, which was the second major hill of the course, and with a giant effort I closed down the gap and got to the leading group. I was now in fourth, with the group pulling a gap on the rest of the field.
During the second lap, Travis and Rourke put in an attack and I dropped off to about 30 seconds behind, I took a High5 energy gel and the chase was on. On my third lap I put the pressure on and by the end of the lap I had caught up to the leading two riders, Rourke and Travis. On my final lap Rourke picked up the pace leaving just me and him out in front to set the pace. My race came to an end with completing my four laps, still finishing on Rourke's wheel with me and him getting the fastest lap time of the day.
I won my category, Junior's by around 4 minutes! Thanks to everyone for the support out there and to Cameron Wareing and Jade for feeding.
It was a really awesome race and I look forward to racing there again!
The amount of laps we were supposed to do got reduced to 4 laps, but the heat on the day was crazy making the course even tougher. My race was at 11am, so we all lined up with elites first, u23's second, juniors third and youth riders fourth, meaning I was one group from the back of the field. The start was a mess with a rider falling over causing a bunch up and chaos. I managed to get going again now quite far back, so I was on the chase. Up the first hill I got myself into about 13th overall and remained there until the course opened up again, which was the second major hill of the course, and with a giant effort I closed down the gap and got to the leading group. I was now in fourth, with the group pulling a gap on the rest of the field.
During the second lap, Travis and Rourke put in an attack and I dropped off to about 30 seconds behind, I took a High5 energy gel and the chase was on. On my third lap I put the pressure on and by the end of the lap I had caught up to the leading two riders, Rourke and Travis. On my final lap Rourke picked up the pace leaving just me and him out in front to set the pace. My race came to an end with completing my four laps, still finishing on Rourke's wheel with me and him getting the fastest lap time of the day.
I won my category, Junior's by around 4 minutes! Thanks to everyone for the support out there and to Cameron Wareing and Jade for feeding.
It was a really awesome race and I look forward to racing there again!
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