Sabie XCM 3 SA champs

The beautiful Sabie hosted the spectacular 2010 SA championships. With nature doing its best to try and accommodate, the weather also came to the party. Well, sort of, it had rained prior to the event but race day was perfect. So nature and beauty aside, there was some serious racing to attend to.

The ladies 70km started with the 110km men, with the first serious climb staring just 3km into the race. This does not give you a lot of time to warm up but the ladies where in the mood to race. At the foot of the climb Carla Rowley described Yolande Speedy's last look to the rest of the field as " come on, you are not going to let me go now already?", but she did and she stayed in the lead to win the SA gold medal. Congrats Yolande, it is encouraging to see you still push hard when you are not being chased.

The rest of the race proceeded where Samantha Oosthuizen crested before Carla, followed by Mariska Strauss. The pace was quite fast and following a conservative approach the race only changed after half way. Carla had a 2 minute lead on the rest of the field by then, but my first objective was to gain some time on the second major climb.

This steep one changed the profile dramatically. I managed to move up two positions and only had Carla ahead of me. Riding at my own pace I then chased to the finish and catching up to Carla about 5km from the finish. By this stage there were plenty of fun riders on the course, and at this point I must apologise to the riders if we passed unexpectedly. Sorry riders!

I rode with Carla till the last moments, and had to kick up a little sprint to get the silver medal. What a race. It felt good.

The results:

1. Yolande Speedy (MTN/Energade)

2. Karien van Jaarsveld (NATRO)

3. Carla Rowley

4. Mariska Strauss (MTN/Energade)

5. Samantha Oosthuizen