SA DHI National #3 - Port Elizabeth - 27 May 2012

Last year we didn't have the best experience at the PE National (with the race being called off due to rain) so I was hoping for something a lot better, track and weather wise. We arrived after a 12 hour long road trip in the Jeep. 

The track walk was probably one of the worse experiences in my life. I walked the track pretty early on Friday morning and was met by about 1000 big spiders - and I don't do spiders! In between being the "track spider web removal guy" I managed to find a few good lines on what looked to be an awesome track.

My thoughts were right - the track was a ton of fun to ride. It had tight, awkward, flat, drifty corners the whole way down. I haven't had that much fun on a first run down a track this whole year.

I managed to get everything on the track done before the end of Fridays practice. The one thing that I couldn't do was remember the whole track. With so many tight corners and thick bush a lot of it looked the same. But I did manage to catch a few runs on GoPro so I studied the track using this footage.

Race day was rather cold, although the sun was out. My one and only practice run of the day didn't quite go according to plan. During the latter part of Saturdays session, somebody must have destroyed the take-off of one of my lines - the line hopped over this massive deep rut near the bottom. Thanks to the take-off not being there I came up short and cased the rut hard and went over the bars. I got down from my accidental head stand and pushed back up the track to give it another shot. This time I boosted and cleared the rut with out a problem. To add insult to injury, my tire burped in the next corner, sending me over the bars again. After sorting out my tire and icing my swollen ankle, I then found that my cranks had shifted over slightly. Mark Hopkins from cSixx helped me out and got everything sorted just in time for me to get on the shuttle for my seeding run.

My seeding run was good. I was stoked to be be seeded 3rd overall and after some more ice on my ankle, I headed up to the top for my race run. 

Everything was going great in my run until I drifted a bit wide in one of the corners and came into contact with a tree that stopped me dead in my tracks. I put my feet down and luckily didn't come off the bike. I charged hard for the rest of my run and tried to pull back some time. I ended up 6th overall and 3rd Junior. This wasn't the result I was hoping for, but I had such a fun weekend on the bike and an awesome time in PE. Huge congrats to the guys from Hayterdale Trails on making a super sick track and to everyone involved in the event. 

Busy few Weekends of Riding

These past few weekends I haven't done much other than ride a bike, which to me is a weekend well spent. It all kicked off with the Karkloof Classic Enduro on the 15th of April. This was the first event of its kind in the country and I definitely  think there will be more to come. In short, riders ride to the top of the hill and are not timed. We then are timed on the way down a piece of single track - we then repeat the process for a second time. This gives us two timed runs which are added together to form our final time. I found that the 6 inches of travel on the Morewood Shova was a bit too much for this event as I really battled on the up hills. I was finally placed as 2nd Junior and 8th overall the following day after a slight disaster on the race organisers part - they lost my time and so I wasn't counted in the overall standings or awarded with any prize money on the Saturday. I then did the Karkloof 40km along with Travis Browning. We really worked hard but still had lots of fun on the many pieces of single track out on the route. I was rather surprised to find out that we finished  20th out of 610 riders. Not too shabby for a bunch of downhillers haha!

The following weekend saw another Enduro event, this time at Cascades. The course was not very suitable for a 6 inch travel bike and so I am afraid to say that I was beaten (in one case, quite convincingly) by some xc riders on their carbon xc bikes. Definitely not my finest hour! Never the less it was a really great event and I had some fun on the bike. I then raced home and packed for the journey to Newcastle, where the Vulintaba MTB Experience was being put on. I met up with my legendary Team Jeep team mates and we camped for the night. Sunday morning, and we were up bright and early, ready to quickly lose a few golf balls and then ride the 40km. I can't begin to explain how much I absolutely loved the course! It was about 80% single track and I was riding with some good friends which made it even better.

This weekend has already gotten off to a great start, riding wise. I had an awesome session at the bmx track with TJSA team mate, Kyle Davids, today and I am looking forward to spending a lot more hours on two wheels this weekend!