Sani2C - Stage 2

The day started somewhat more leisurly than most races. The seeded start meant that we started at 7:45. The first 10 km got the legs going and soon we were hitting the dual tracks with glimpses of the valley below. Chris was once again up ahead and I was riding mid pack, mindful of what was to come. As we hit Yankee Doodle my spirits lifted. This was the reason we all mountainbike...absolute singletrack bliss! Soon we were onto Murray's Meander and with some open track I managed to stitch a few proper sections together. We passed the school singletrack and I realised that my partner was further back. Selfishly I continued my run down into the valley trusting that Chris would not need assistance. All too soon we were on the Umko single track. I waited after the section for Chris and after a few minutes I saw his grinning face in a group coming through. We made our way accross the floating bridge into some more single track. Soon we crossed the Peri scaffolding bridge into the first water point. A splash and dash saw us on our way and straight away the climbing started. Kms 38 to 68 to Nandos took us 2h30m to do with 1200m ascent and 13 water crossings. A new addition to this years event was bridges over some of the more challenging water crossings. The result was that every single crossing was ridable. It was getting hotter and the climbing seemed to carry on for ever. The climb before Nandos was particularly untimely, but we soldiered on. At Nandos we had a 15 minute rest as Push of a Climb was coming up. I felt quite shattered and the rest rejuvinated me for the remaining 32 km. After push of a climb, we worked our way to the fishermans trail and onto the third water point. At this point I simply wanted to finish the ride. As we left Chris mentioned that a time of 6:30 would not be too shabby, and I took it upon myself to kick really hard to see how close we could get to it. So the last 15 km took us 32 minutes and we crossed the line in 6:35. Like they say at Sani2C "That was PROPER !"