This year's Epic saw the introduction of a prologue to seed riders before Saturday's Stage 1 got under way. The prologue consisted of 18km of rather hilly forest road riding in and around the beautiful Pezula Estate. Teams set off every 30 seconds, so there were plenty of targets up the road to aim at, as well as being a target for other teams.
From the start the ride was a flat out sprint - maximum effort for 40 minutes, which certainly doesn't suit my style of riding at all. Gasping for air, I did my best to hang onto Craig's wheel, and apart from a silly fall I had on a rather steep uphill corner things went quite well. We had set ourselves the goal of finishing in the top 50, and we also wanted to beat the team starting 4 minutes ahead of us. We finished 50th in our category, and 59th overall, and just managed to beat our 4 minute men. We had a slight mechanical at the end, with Craig's outer gear cable breaking, which meant he couldn't change gears.
The thing that really blew us away was the fact that the pros finished a whole 10 minutes ahead of us. I don't know where we could find another 10 minutes on that course.
So far things were living up to our expectations, the training had paid off, and we were going to have a great Epic.
STG 0 50. Cat, 59. GC
For the Epic theme song this year, play the following:
at last..
ReplyDeleteSome of us have jobs that demand a lot of our time ;)
ReplyDeleteThe "prolgue" has been up for a week now? how bout stage 1... you know, the first one that craig started really suffering... hehehehehe.
ReplyDeleteand for the job quip. In the last week i have had two fashion shoots, and one wedding up in Snor City so that includeds travel time etc... telling me i dont work?? HA!!
ReplyDelete