Travelled through to PE and stayed over at my parent's house on Friday night, we had to be at the Gamtoos Ferry Hotel at 6 o'clock to register for the Trans Elands 2018. Gemma and I got up at four o'clock to begin the journey down to the Gamtoos valley. Arrive there safe and sound and the vibe is electric and there are a lot of people all registering for the 60km lite and the 160km extreme races. Gemma had decided she was going to do the lite. Registered and got ready.
07h00 the extreme race has begun.
A very entertaining race, even managed to throw my toys out of the cot at the end. Apologies to one and all, this was pure frustration and adrenaline fueling the fire!
Just before we turned off the tar road onto the gravel road, Steven decided to go off into the front with a couple of other riders. I thought this is fine, I will catch up to him later. How wrong I was, Steven decided he would stay in the front. By the time we got to the East Cape Cycles water point at Loerie, Steven had four minutes on us already. I had a bit of a dig at trying to catch him, I managed to see him, but decided that I was not going to put myself into the red like I wanted to. I could see that he was on a mission and travelling rather fast, we decided to keep the pressure on him though up through Lex's monster, which we did. We kept it at the four minutes. On the downhill after water point 2 with a 24km head wind Steven put more distance between us. At water point 3 the cheese farm we were told that he was 15 minutes ahead of us. Jason Peach decided he was going to have a go and try and catch Steven, Yolande and I decided we needed to up our pace and start to try and chase. By the time we got to the top of the hill at Mast, Steven had 8 minutes on us. We knew that the last bit was going to be hard and really tough, I was a bit blown, so hung back a bit to regroup and try and recoup my energy. When we got towards Zuurbron my energy came back and I was told that Jason Peach was only 3 minutes ahead of me and Steven was four minutes ahead of him. Interesting. I decided to catch Jason as my legs had returned fully, I managed to, then we had an amazing sprint for the finish. I overshot the turning and ended up coming in third place instead of second.
That's racing for you. Lesson to learn, listen to rider's briefing in the morning at the start of the race.
👀💪🙈
Well done Steven and Jason. 2019 beckons,
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