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With a quick turn around after Dalby Forrest, it was pretty much a case of getting home cleaning and repacking up my kit to head to the first round of the World cup in Pietermaritzburg South Africa. We (me and dad) headed out on the Tuesday (19th April) and after three flights and two car drives we arrived (Wednesday) at what would be our home for the next 5 days at Acacia Bush Lodge. Set in the out skirts of Pietermaritzburg it was a relaxing accommodation with self catering facilities which I always find feels more like home if I can cook my own food. Driving Durban, checking into our lodge, stocking the kitchen with food from the local supermarket took up most of the Wednesday, however I didn’t have the option of building the bike and going for an easy spin as my bike was still in Johannesburg. Every athlete’s worst nightmare when your most important piece of race equipment doesn’t arrive at the final destination. Fortunately for us there was another flight flying into Durban, so my bike was put on that flight and then delivered by the Airline straight to our lodge the very same day.

Not until 11pm at night mind you…but still…could have been worse! However my bike not turning up was not the only bad of the day. After brushing my teeth I fainted, knocked my head on the toilet cistern on the way down (smashing it in half in the process) and causing a nasty bump to the head and splitting my ear open. The bump made me go into a bit of shock as I didn’t feel it coming, all I remember is my old man over me and warm blood pouring down my face. The following day I was suffering with a sore head and constant headaches, but even so I had to sign on get my number board and practice the course. I did 3 laps that day not really enjoying the riding as my confidence wasn’t at its best and on the rock garden sections of the course I was hitting them to slow and cautious and ending up making extremely hard work of what is normally one of the strongest parts of my race. The Friday (day before the race) went a lot better as I wasn’t suffering as much with the headaches and my concentration was much better, although I still felt like I couldn’t nail the technical sections the way I wanted, underlying was good legs and with there being 310m of climbing per lap having good legs would make up for the lost time on the descents.

Race Day. The morning of the race the course was slightly greasy, but with my start time being 2:30pm and the weather heating up, I was convinced it would dry out and that my Kenda Smallblock tyres would be the choice for the day. After my warm up and heading to the start straight I was in good spirit knowing I had decent legs I was happy to go to battle. Off the gun we hammered down the start straight which was pretty much the only place to move up before hitting the first section of singletrack, where it would be time to get the elbows out. Once in the singletrack it was standstill and all you could do was walk and wait until the course opened out again. There were only a couple of places throughout the lap where there was space to overtake so I made the most of them overtaking a few riders at a time, then settling back into the narrow stuff. My race plan was to simply overtake in space and relax when behind riders in the singletrack.

From the start I realized that my legs wasn’t as good as I was expecting them to be, however, my tactics were working quite well as I’d moved up from 102 on the grid to 71. The second lap was a struggle and I only seemed to be able to put in short efforts before my legs started slowing up and by the end of the lap I’d dropped back to 79. From that point on my target of getting into the top 50 was looking unlikely as I was doing all I could to fight off every rider that overtook me until I reached the finish in 88th. Crossing the line in this race was disappointing. I felt pretty gutted, drained and the first place to visit was the toilet for a number 2. All that was in my head was ‘another World Cup had come and gone and again I failed to reach my target result’. After an evening of thinking what went wrong I just came to the conclusion that it just one of those things, and I know that when my legs are up for it the top 50 will be achieved! Now I’m getting on with my training and looking forward to the next World Cup in Dalby Forrest in 3 weeks time.

First though I have the Wiggle Enduro 6 this Sunday (30th) at Catton Park where I will take part in the 6 hour pairs event with team mate Ben Simmons. We won the event last year so hopefully we can retain our title… : )

Results
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