African Continental Championships:

It’s always a special feeling for me to pull the Green and Gold outfit over my shoulders and the first opportunity we had this year was down in Durbanville for the 2014 African Continental Championships.

After the long journey down to the Cape, Paul and I met up with new team mates Gert Heyns, Allan Hatherly and Genevieve van Coller.  As always before a XCO showdown the build-up towards the actual 90minutes of racing was massive. Behind the scenes everything has to run like clockwork for us athletes to have the perfect race. Once again I have to compliment Epic Sports for fine tuning the Dogma beforehand and of course Paul for all the organization and motivation.

Oom Brian and his team did a great job with the course by adding some fun technical aspects to it. A couple of big jumps got every worked up, but in the end it all flowed very well. 

Allan showing off:

With the u/23 men battle scheduled for 15:20 only, it was tricky to stay relaxed and not to over analyze during the morning leading up to the race. After a little roller spin all that was left to do was to suck on some High5 nutrition while waiting to suite up.

The heat in the start chute was mad. So was the pace up the first drag with James Reid crushing it from the gun. Gert and I were able to hang on for a bit with a slight gap already over the rest of the field, not even halfway through the first lap. Unfortunately I made a slight mistake, lost my front wheel and went down around a lose corner. However with the adrenaline pumping, mixed with some self-inflicted anger it didn’t take long to close the gap. 

As we rolled through onto the 2^nd lap, James was off the front and Brendon Davids started moving up. I jumped onto his wheel, but still battling to get into a rhythm I couldn’t follow for very long. By lap 3 I managed to regain a comfortable stride and with no further hassles I crossed the line in 3^rd.  

It might not have been the most exciting race, but none the less I’m happy with the result considering the classy field.

Full results sheet: http://www.cyclingsa.com/App_Resources/Uploads/FILE00003120.xlsx

This weekend Thaba Trails will be hosting the first Gauteng Provincial and I’m excited to see all the fluo a[s]g MTB Academy members in action out there.

Cheers!

Adt

Kicking off the 2014 season:

After a couple of weeks off the bike with no real structured training it was time to regain focus and start putting some serious effort into our pre-season base preparation. About two weeks ago, mentors Paul and Yolande, decided we should break away to the Lowveld for some quality training time with the a[s]g PYCycling gang, just before the year takes off in full force.

Training camp in and around the Mankele area was a great break away for all of us and a chance to think about and discuss the challenges ahead and most importantly to get some proper training done. It’s always a great help if you can surround yourself with positive people, all focused and willing to motivate each other.

We arrived back in the city just in time for the first race of the season. Of course I have to defend my USN Cup series title this year so I needed a good result, but more importantly I wanted it to be a good leg stretch and lung burner before African Continental Champs this coming weekend. On the bike side we are really privileged to have our Pinarello Dogma XC’s equipped with some Powertap hubs on stiff and lightweight Ritchey wheel sets and the always faithful Continental tires. With the help of Epic Sports sorting out my stallion all that was left for me was to go out and turn those Crank Brother pedals over as fast as I could.

It was good to see some proper talent on the start line, especially a guy called Max Knox. However being surrounded by a group of fluo Rudy Project helmets with encouraging comments made me very excited to kick off the 2014 season on a high. Must admit I had no real plan, but about 5km into the race I put in a big effort hoping to split the group and to see who I should keep an eye on. As I looked back a bit further on I noticed a substantial gap had opened and I was off the front by myself.

To be honest at first I didn’t think I could maintain that, but a while later, Coach Paul standing in the veld somewhere, shouted a time gap and I suddenly realized I was gaining ground and that it might be possible to stay clear. From there on I kept my head down, topped up the tank with some High5 nutrition and forced myself not to look back. In the end it paid off and I managed to take my first win of the season.

In general it was good day for the whole team. I was surprised with my form this early on, but also realized that there is still plenty of room for improvement and I’m looking forward to a good season with a great bunch of people.

Till next weekend!

Arno