Balancing family life and your cycling interests can be tricky. Weekends are packed with so many activities and it is just not always possible to cycle all weekend. With this in mind I entered the short route for the Buco Origin of Trails. With a good training block behind me and getting my weight back down again after falling off the banting wagon a bit, I would probably have coped very well with the long route, but spending time with the family is a priority that I don't want to shift, particularly after an eventful and challenging year for us.
Doing the short route afforded me the opportunity to go at it really hard. Usually with the longer stages the thinking (with me at least) is to ride within myself, look after the body and come out to fight another day tomorrow. The mind-shift was refreshing. I pushed hard both days and I am feeling surprisingly fresh.
As far as short routes go, the Orgin of Trails routes are some of the best around. Day 1 saw us going from Coertzenburg to Jonkershoek via some of the private wine farms dropping us into the second contour. The long route split up to go to saaltjie and we continued on the second contour to the red trail that took us to the first water point. The long route continued to the Fire Hut while we had some respite on the tar road back to Ride-In to the second water point and a short section of single track. We crossed the Eerste River again at the suspension bridge and enjoyed some of the XC course before rolling into the finish line at Coertzenburg.
1h53m and 20th overall was a hard, but good day out.
Day 2 saw an increase in the short route numbers with the medium route riders (who did the long on day 1 and short on day 2) joining the short route. We made our way to Eden where we enjoyed the single track and climbed our way out to Mostertsdrift again where we moved over to Uniepark and onto the big climb of the day. We climbed up to Banhoek where we got the water point for the day. Some more climbing took us over into the Banhoek valley where the short and long routes split. Some of the most fun single track followed and if you ignore the few service roads we crossed, we had some uniterrupted fun for around 7km. The traffic was not too bad and I used the time to recover somewhat before we made our way back to Coerzenburg, with a nasty little bite at the end of the race, and some of the XC course to finish off with.
2h03m and 19 overall GC was a solid enough ride.
Here is my evaluation of the event:
Route: 5/5. It was interesting and challenging, but for those that are not that fit or technically minded most would still be ridable, even if only at a slow pace. The beauty of it is that most of the route is available outside of the event as either part of the STF network that is accessible with no charge (I would encourage a donation to the STF if you ride the routes), Jonkershoek and the Banhoek Trails.
Route Markings and Marshals 4/5. A few riders got confused with some of the signage and ended up doing some extra riding. There were also riders on both days cutting sections out of the course where it was clear that the course was looping back and crossing. Usually this sort of thing would not bother me, but as I was in racing mode for once, it annoyed me to no end. A few marshals recording race numbers where riders did not complete the course or a timing station at the far end of these loops would sort this sort of thing out.
Venue 5/5. It is a huge improvement on the start at the Old Collage in the centre of town and Blaauklippen with more than enough parking and ample space for sponsors and vendors in the race village.
Value proposition 5/5. The entry fee on face value seems on the expensive side, but a good quality T shirt, a cap after stage one, some free photos from the Under Armor crowd, free coffee and some really nice lucky draw prizes all added to the value proposition.
I am however dismayed to hear about bikes being stolen (again!) at a cycling event. This is becoming the norm these days and is probably one of the biggest threats to these events going forward. People will not stay to be entertained after events if security is not addressed. While the bike park seemed secure and riders were encouraged to make use of this facility, one would expect that bikes locked onto the back of cars would be safe. It aparently takes a good bike thief less than 30 seconds to cut a lock and remove a bike from the rack, so clearly we need to re-think our strategy around securing our bikes.
Well done to all that tackled this year's Origin of Trails and I hope to see you all again next year.
