This race is an exhilarating 230 km dash from the sleepy village of Willowmore in the Karoo ( Eastern Cape ) to Jeffreys Bay , the home of the worlds finest surf and perfect wave.
The World's Longest 1 Day Team MTB race on earth!
This race is an exhilarating 230 km dash from the sleepy village of Willowmore in the Karoo ( Eastern Cape ) to Jeffreys Bay , the home of the worlds finest surf and perfect wave.
Not worrying about that the 1000 odd riders started the race on Saturday 14 August at 10 am and the lead pack blasted the 1st 100 km's in an awesome 31 km/hour!
The front groups remained strung out within 10 minutes of each other till 150 km when the awesome MAC was reached. This is the Mother Of All Climbs and is no easy task. An average gradient of 10 percent is always fun when you on a MTB for 5 hours.
The temperatures at this point were reaching 34 to 38 degrees. It did however drop intermittently when riding through the majestic Baviaans Kloof World Heritage Site.
Absolutely beautiful. At this point we were about 30 minutes behind the leaders only due to water stop delays as we had a few mates taking a bit of time to enjoy the scenery?!?
As nightfall approached all the front riders new they wanted to be of the death defying Bergplaas Pass which can be very dangerous due to its sharp bends and sheer drops.
We reached the 1st water hole where our seconding team was at the 175 km mark well ahead of schedule and well nourished on our bars, gels and drinks for the incredibly long Never Ender which is a climb of relative altitude increase but is made difficult as it is dark and eyes take some adjusting!
We went up here pretty quickly and managed to take back 2 places before reaching the last seconding hole at 204 km's. Here it was cold and very dark in the moon less night.
Negotiating a few farm gates and cattle en route....we smelt home and tore into the last 28 km's at 40 km's per hour!
Catching a further 2 teams was great too as we were 3 teams working together.
Whow, what a feeling to smell the sea air, see the lights of the bay ahead....and all feeling great too.
We finished in 10 hours and a minute, with all 3 teams coming in together.
As with most hard core marathon or ultra marathon riders....they just come in all shapes and sizes with loads of folk giving it their all till 8 am the next morning. We did have 24 hrs in which to compete the event.
Without doubt I felt great throughout the event and ate a Power Bar per hour from 2 hours onwards, a gel every 45 minutes from 4 hours, a few apples, a sandwich here and there and about 500 ml's of Endurance per hour.....a bullet proof concoction sure to keep you strong for any event.
What next???
December is the annual Desert Dash......one of the longest solo MTB races in the world from Windhoek to Swakopmund....340 km's. This time different in that it starts at 3 pm and you ride 12 hours through the night.
Fun!