This weekend I was in Port Elisabeth for the PE Herald. I have done that race three times before with the result 3, 4 and 2, so it was only number 1 that was missing. This year the competition was much harder since it was the fist race of 13 in the national series and the new teams wanted to show who was the strongest. It was three teams represented, which of one UCI team, with 6-7 riders in each. All South African top ladies were there, including the girls forming the national team that will go to Qatar on Friday to take part in the Tour of Qatar, a new UCI race for woman. The attacks started about 3 kilometers into the race and kept coming until about 40 kilometer when a group of three riders got away. It was one girl from every team but since non of the top riders were in the break I did not think that the teams were happy with it, but no one was interested to bring them back. When the gap was 2min45sek with about 30km to go I did not think that we were going to see them anymore. I started attacking and attacking to either pick up the pace or get away and finally with about 10km to go we caught them. Now we were about 20 girls coming to the sprint with all the sprinters there. With just a few hundred meters to go I was boxed in a bit to the back but I felt that I had some speed left in my legs and saw a gap to the left by the sidewalk and took the chance to go past, the sprint was already in full swing at this moment, I got up beside the two girls that were going for it and managed to pass them just before the line. Second were Chrissie Viljoen Team MTN and third Anriette Schoeman Team Nashua, she is from Port Elisabeth and has won the race 11 times before, this was the first time she did not win:-) It was an amazingly good feeling to win on my own with three teams there! I have felt that the training is going well and it was nice to see it also in a race. 

Since it was the first race in the series I get to ride the next race in the green (!) leaders jersey, that race is in two weeks time here in Cape Town. 

After the flower ceremony I got to experience how big cycling is in this country, it was a lot of TV and newspaper interviews, it felt like I had one a really big race, it really is different to Sweden were just a few watch the prize giving and no TV cameras can be seen:-) 

The actual prize giving was held a bit later on a little island in a lake on The Boardwalk, we were taken on jetskis over to the podium, also a bit different:-)

http://www.theherald.co.za/herald/news/n04_02022009.htm

http://www.supersport.co.za/cycling/article.aspx?headline=Nolan%20gives%20Neotel%20another%20big%20win%20&id=286498