Winter has arrived in the cape and we felt it on Saturday morning with a chilly start to the Willow Creek/Computer Mania mountain bike classic which was held just outside Worcester. When it’s warmer to stand at the start line rather than warm up, then it’s pretty cold in my books.

A fairly strong field lined up including Christiaan Kriek, Craig Boyes, Stefan Ihlenfeldt and Lieuwa Boonstra all wanting to win a lap top which was up for grabs for the top 3 places.

We set off at a steady pace before a couple of acceleration s whittled the group down to 5 of us including myself and the four mentioned above.

Unfortunately for me my time at the front soon came to an end. Riding up a slight uphill, jeep track into the rising sun we were a bit blinded and when switching across to the other side of the jeep track I failed to notice a ditch which opened up in front of me. This swallowed my front wheel and I came down fairly hard hurting my wrist and knee a bit. I calmly collected my bottles and got going again now in 5th.

I managed to ride back to Stefan who was in 4th eventually until he dropped me on one of the sharp climbs. The terrain was mostly jeep tack surrounded by thick karoo fynbos and rocky roads. Bar a missed turn due to a confusing sign board things went a bit better for me from here in.

I passed Stefan some kilometres later as he had a puncture and gave him my tube and then carried on to finish in a slightly disappointing 4th place. Christiaan took a convincing win with Craig in 2nd and Lieuwa rounding up the podium in 3rd.