after racing in the first round of the sa xco series i decided to stay in stellenbosch to do some solid training and race the second round of the national marathon series in the small town of tulbagh.the weeks training went great and i managed to put out some great numbers.i was realy tired mid week and in need of some serious recovery.our teams sougneur(physio) put me back together and my legs were feeling better on friday.unfortunately i had contracted a slight head cold so i was spending most of the day drowning myself with vit c supplements.as the race would start around 7am on saturday it meant a 4 am wake up so i tried to get to bed early but my sleep was interupted by drug free sport.the did a blood and urine test and as i had too much water during the day i needed to provide another sample.this meant i finaly got to bed at 11pm...

everything went smoothly on saturday with dylan(specialized mechanic) picking us up from the guest farm and making sure we got to tulbagh on time and ready to rock.the race kicked of pretty easy as we followed the epic route from last year.as we hit the first climb at around 10km in the pace heated up quickly.over the top of the climb it was max knox (decca-ghost) leading the race with myself and kevin evans(360-life) trailing a few seconds back.alittle further back david george,adrien niyonshuti and jaques rossouw also chasing hard and getting back to us.at around the 40km mark we all regrouped and the paced eased until 40km to go.kevin and i drilled it at this point and only jaques and david followed suit.as we hit the last climbs which i totaly underestimated,kevin upped the pace and i struggled alittle with cramp at first before finding my legs on the second climb of 4.soon it was just kevin and at the front and with 10km to go it was going to come down to a sprint.in the last few kms jaques was closing in.kevin lead out the sprint and i only just managed to come by him at the end and take the win.thanks to dylan for all the support out there.my bike worked awesome.

im now back at home and doing my last bit of tuning up for the season ahead.

ciao

burry