Attakwas National Marathon and Kruger Park |

The Attakwas National Ultra marathon is supposedly, the toughest one day mountain bike race in South Africa over a very rough, rocky 135km and 2900m of ascent.

The race can be split into 3 sections. The first 30km of jeep track and dirt roads, the next 40km of riding through the Attakwas Kloof; this is the roughest section of the race and the final 50km with a lot of climbing which really tests you this far into the event.

I went into the race knowing I would not be near my best as I had picked a stomach bug two days before and had not fully recovered yet. Anyway I decided to give it a bash.

The race started off at a steady pace with a big bunch remaining intact. The first hard accelerations proved too much for me and I could feel the power lacking as I tried to push it a bit, I backed off and rode my own race.

Photo Credit: Photo Dynamix

I started to feel better in the kloof and started to pick up a couple of positions but was still fairly far off the pace as we started to exit the kloof, and then KABOOM I blew! Worst of all was that I had no reserves and thus was stuck in reverse.

A long arduous push took me to the finish, well off the pace but somewhere in the top 50. No fireworks.

I then travelled up country to join family for a 4 day trip into the Kruger Park where we would be doing one of the bush hikes along the Wolhuter Trail; named after my great grandfather Harry Wolhuter. Harry was a ranger in the Kruger Park and killed a Lion with only a knife as it attacked him and his horse. You can read the full story here.