Everytime the alarm goes off at 03.45 I wonder why I am doing this!? And every time I start a race I remember why! Because I enjoy racing so much.

This past weekend it was two mornings at that time, the 99er on Saturday and Three passes on Sunday. Both in the area of Cape Town.

The 99er is a national seeding event so the Toyota cycle lab team was also here. The category 2 group (Vets and racing ladies) were big for the day. I made sure I was close to the front during the whole race, if a break would happen I wanted to be there! I went on a lot of attacks and had a good hard race. This race finishes with two hills, first Visseshoek - a steep 3 km climb and then the last 1,5km climb to the finish line, both within the last 10 km! Anriette was the only other girl that I saw during the race and at the bottom of the first hill she put the hammer down, she got away with 2 guys but me and a few more caught them on the downhill. So going in to the finishing hill we were side to side and with 300 meters I was just a head of her, but then she kicked and I could not respond. I was still happy with my second place, especially since we were second and third in the category!

Sundays race was a fun ride where you start in your seeded group, I am seeded in C and on the day they decided to start A, B and C together, meaning that I started with the elite men. After about 3 km of the race we climbed up Ou Kaapse weg, I lost the front guys here and did the rest of the race as a hard training ride. I was the fastest girl of the day.

 See a report on cyclenation.co.za 

Last week I got a new mountainbike, thank you Felt for that beautiful Six pro!! And Continental for the tubeless tyres that will make sure I don’t get punctures when I race. I will do my first MTB race this coming weekend, it was 6 years since I last entered a MTB race!