WC Round 1, Pietermaritzburg South Africa

WC Round 1, Pietermaritzburg South Africa

Round 1 of this year’s UCI World Cup series was held in beautiful surrounding mountains of the city of Pietermaritzburg. This with my first time to Africa and I was really excited to be back racing. I was coming into the race confident with a new bike and lots of new sponsor and all the training I had don’t over the winter but was also feeling nervous to if had done enough training and the right type as well.

My first impressions of the track that it looked supper fast the whole way. The top section looked supper fun with some nice turns and jumps. It then shoots you out in to the gully were you can get 60K an hour down in to three big jumps which I was spinning out for in last gear with a 39t chain ring on. The track would be very physically hard because if the pedalling sections but really fun as well.

Practise went really well. I felt fast on the track and got all my lines sorted ready for qualification. We had a bit of rain during the night which made the track a bit slick for practise but with the 25C plus temperatures it soon dried out again. I had a good qualification run and can down in 48th position. I had a goal for this race to get things going with a top 50 finish and after my qualifying run I knew I was on track.

We had an extra day of practise on Saturday and this is always my favourite day as qualification is out the way and the race isn’t till tomorrow so its supper relaxed and fun. We also have the afternoon off so we look this opportunity to test out the hire car a bit.

The night before the race brought so more rain and this time it was really heavy. It was hard to tell if the track would stay wet as practise was a bit slick but sure enough it pretty much completely dried out come race run time. My race run went really well, I had a great top section and got the big table perfect giving my good speed in to the peddle section with I gave it everything I had. I can over the line more than 2 seconds up and I was supper happy as I had had at least achieved my goal for the race. I ended up finish 27th in the end which was the 6th fastest British rider. I’m supper happy to get such a great result at the start of the year and I’m looking forward two round 2 in Val di Sole Italy in a couple of month’s time.