There is something to say about riding from the interior of a continent to the sea with your mountain bike, no wonder all of these races like karoo2coast, sani2sea and joburg2sea are getting so popular. Attakwas is one of these 2sea races, and it feels kind of special riding to the sea.
On Kingsley Holgate's expedition from Cape to Cairo, he carried a zulu calabash filled with Atlantic sea water in the cape and emptied it in the Mediterranean sea at Cairo, why did he do it? because it was kind of special. So why did i ride 135km (Total ascent 2950 m) with my bike from oudtshoorn to the mouth of the great brak river over the Outeniqua mountains, well it was kind of special, a beautiful area and good cape epic training even though i just carried energy bars and water in my bladder. The race started at the Chandelier Game & Ostrich Show farm in Oudtshoorn and followed mostly jeep track into the Doringrivier Nature reserve where a sable buck ran on an open karoo plain next to us for a long time, thinking he is one of us. It quickly becomes undulating with rocky descents where somebody shouted to me "don't be a hero!" with me laughing and bombing down. Some river crossings and a technical jeep track took us onto an unforgiving rise. When you reach the attakwas kloof, you go deep down into valleys and climb out again all of the time, the down-hills was fun and the climbs hard, an even though there were no single-track every other terrain was encountered, sand, mud, gravel, rocky down-hills and really really steep technical hills with fynbos everywhere. I saw the mccains, and tweet told me that they passed this area a few year back in the Eden adventure race. After getting a spur burger at a water point, the last 40km takes forever, the undulating hills hard (but good training), and you start looking for the sea like a little child going there for the first time. They say it is the hardest single day mountain-bike race in the country, and they might be right. The race ends on a downhill, and seeing the sea felt great!! 739 riders started, 511 finished, I came 375 in 10:18:30, Kevin Evans won in 5:43:52 Race cutoff was 12 hours, i made it, and got some good saddle time and experience. 10 hours in the saddle wasn't that bad, as the next day i went adventure caving in the cango caves and rode an ostrich. It was as well organised race, and i enjoyed it, even though i missed my good old single-track. The Mummy Man -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "DarkAndDirty" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected]. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/darkanddirty?hl=en.
