Illovo Eston 40km

After a night of minimal sleep i was up early and off to the race i arrived there expecting to give it my all and hopefully achieve top 5 but when i arrived i was told all the juniors were racing the 60km besides Mathew English who had beaten me by a minute at karkloof so i knew a win was going to be hard but was possible. On the startline it was all jokes and before we knew it the 30 second countdown was announced, i had a good start and on the top of the first short climb it was me, Brad schuit, Evan Van Der Spuy, and Jedson Tooms, aswell as Matthew English about 5 metres back. 1km in we saw the KOM sign and Brad attacked i knew it was a large amount of money on offer so i followed and counter-attacked him, with my head down and peddalling my heart out i arrived at the top with a gap of about 200 meters , it wasnt my plan to go from the start but i knew it was a good oppertunity for me so i rode for about 8km by myself and then reached the first piece of singletrack and was held up by the 60km back markers.

While begging for them to track i was slowly losing my patiance and knew i was losing time, little did i know that jedson had overtaken me on the long grass just off the singletrack, i quickly came to my senses and starting shouting for track, as i raised my voice the 60km riders started to sympathize. Out the singletrack i was second and could hear Murray Starr and evan van der spuy shouting track about 20 meters back , so i attacked up the climb and was quickly intact with Jedson, we decided to work together but after 10km i realised i was doing majority of the work (90%) and he was just taking advantage of the slipstream so i attacked him and solo'd home with 20 km ,, the singletrack was awesome and i loved every second of it , stihl cleared the way and boy did they do a good job, with about 5km to go i knew i would win  unless i managed to get a technical or crash. i didn't do either and managed to come home in 1:31:21 and was about 5 min faster than mathew english who was closely followed by Murray Starr. I was really excited to win and was happy to have the fastest ever time for the 40km illovo eston which was a real achievement..

Until next time i'm out