MTN Zoo Lake Criteruim

Sunday 31 Aug: It was a good thing that I turned around and went back to fetch my arm and knee warmers before heading out to Zoo Lake for the MTN criteruim series. On the ride to the start an icy wind pushed me along at 30km/h. . . . uphill!! Dust, dirt and grass blasted across the road making the ride unpleasant. This should have been a warning of what was to come.

Four weeks off the bike due to a chest cold had seen me forfeit 3 races and about R500 in entrance fees. I had rolled out three times this week on training rides in the vain hope of salvaging some form. Last year I had watched the series from the side line, holding a box of tissue's, coughing. There was no chance I was going to miss it again!! even if dark polar winds where threatning to dump snow on the northern suburbs of Johannesburg .

The MTN series is well organised, big prize money and strongly supported. The Vets race had all the big names and I was determined to survive. I had 30minutes to hang in, plus one lap to get to the finish. The cource had a strong climb up past the start/ finish, a right onto Jan Smuts avenue before another right onto a fast downhill section (which should cancell out the headwind) before climbing back up to the start line again for the next lap. A piece of cake . . . . if I could only hold onto the wheels infront. Sixty seconds into the race I realised this was going to be the problem !!

At the first turn the pack was already stretched out into a 5o metre long eschelon with me hanging onto the back. The 6okm/h downhill into the wind, ripped my lungs out and the the climb back up the hill for the first lap was done at a heart stopping 186 beats per minute. A brief slowing up on the second lap was only that . . .brief. . .as the guys on the front sat up to look back and gauge what damage they had done. The hammer was put down again on the second climb past the start/finnish and it was about here that I blew my last gaskett and started to suck in air and sound like my grandmothers 60 year old washing machine on a spin cycle. The next 20 minutes where miserable.

There was no hiding in the 5 man group that had become the ambulance at the rear of the cource. Each lap past the start was broadcast onto a giant screen for friends and family to see and a loudspeaker gave time gaps on the freight train that was about to flatten us from the rear. On my second last lap, I was forced into the siding as the express came barrelling past, kicking up dust to be blown into my face ... aaargghh . . .the humilitation of being lapped so close to the end. But there was little time to appreciate that humilation after finnishing, because I would spend the next hour trying to suck oxygen in through a straw and coughing my lungs up . Who would have guessed that O2 could be in such short supply on a cold, dry and dusty day in Johannesburg? My chest had taken a beating along with the rest of me,and left to battle against the headwind on the long, cold ride home. To add insult to injury, I couldn't even complete the onsite sms entry for the cellphone prize draw!! What a miserable day.