July 2014

Image credit: Ash Smit

Image credit: Ash Smit

Image credit: Rob Gee

With just over a week having passed from one of the biggest races of my season and career to date, I’ve had some time to reflect on a day that didn’t work out as planned.

My goal was to finish within the top 2/3 of the field.

The race started off well, perhaps better than I expected. It is hard to know where you are lying in the race with some 90 starters when we’re typically used to racing in fields a third of that size. There was a good contingent of South Africans though, so in a sense you could benchmark yourself off other riders who you knew, rather than off the many foreigners. Coming through the second feed at kilometre 14 of the 95km race I was with Nico Bell (RECM), and I found out after the race in the top 40, well within the top two thirds. It’s not pleasing to think what could have been and there was still the lion’s share of the race to come. I was going hard, but felt good and the effort felt sustainable on a course which I knew. But as it sometimes happens in racing, I punctured a few kilometres later. I smashed the rim on an unsuspecting rock and was forced to put a tube in.

Image credit: Boogs Photography

Image Credit: Rob Gee

This unfortunately was the start of further puncture and chain issues which I have to say a big thank you to Morne and Dylan for helping resolve at the 5^th tech zone.

Essentially the race was over; it’s not every day that you get a World Championship though, so I was set on at the very least finishing, which I did in 74^th place.

Once again I was privileged to enjoy the undying support of family and friends. My parents, family and girlfriend were fantastic in the feed/tech zones.

I’ve been taking some time off the bike to recover from a busy first half of the year before preparations start for the second half. The three big races on the calendar for the team are the Altech Autopage Jozi2Kozi, Bridge Cape Pioneer Trek and the FNB Wines2Whales.