After last weeks fast and furious downhill dash to the finish line, racing came to our neighbourhood this week. This is the kind of route profile you love to see when you have Andrew Mclean in your team, or maybe not!!
The course starts on the well known Krugersdorp Hill (locally known as Hillsnax). It then comes down Sterkfontein Hill, and past the Sterkfontein Caves - the Cradle of Humankind which is a World Heritage site and the location of the oldest known human remains. The course then heads out along the Krugersdorp highway, sharing part of the course with the 94.7. At Diepsloot, the course does an about turn and heads back to the finish near Muldersdrift.
At the start, I went straight to the front to set the pace, hoping to give Andrew the chance to launch off the front with the baunch alreasdy struggling. We would then try to vary the pace to shake off any stubborn competition. But nobody came with me! Pretty soon I had a gap of a couple of hundred metres. Andrew saw that nobody in the bunch was responding, so he jumped across to me - bringing along another Cyclelab rider. Unfortunately, the effort of hanging onto Andrew's wheel was a bit to much for him, and he dropped soon after reaching the top of Hillsnax. Without having to put in too many attacks, we had already achieved what we wanted, and put our heads down. By the time we reached the top of Sterkfontein, we were told by the commissaire that we had a gap of 1:07 - great, but still plenty km's left!
Andrew was driving the pace really hard, and with his relative size being significantly smaller than me, I had my work cut out here. Looking at the power stats, I stopped pedalling for the sum total of 3:30 minutes, the whole race! But these are our training grounds, and we know every single bump in the road!
The pace didn't slow for a minute, and the first hour of the race I spent at a Normalised Power of 354w, and my Functional Threshold is 345w (well it was anyway). We turned on to the highway with the commissaire telling us the gap was over 3min, to a chase group of 8, who had a gap of 2 min to the next group. Knowing that we would have a few team mates in that chase group, we knew that only 4 or so riders would be chasing - 4 against 2, just our kind of odds :-)
The highway section is very hard. The rolling hills are completely exposed to the wind, and the road just seems to be endless! With Andrew being lighter than me, every uphill was pushing me into the uncomfortable wattage above threshold, but I had to hang in, and drive the pace on the flats and the downhills.
The commissaire was no longer giving us time updates, obviously thinking that we had a big enough gap not to be concerned. We turned at Diepsloot, and were already well down the highway when we saw the chase bunch coming in the opposite direction. By now I think Andrew had his sights on the VA bunch! Having had a Biogen gel and got some liquids in, I was starting to feel a bit stronger again and worked hard to keep the pace high.
Hill after hill came and went, and I was beginning to wonder if they had moved the finish line! Finally we came over the last hill, and the descent into Muldersdrift. The finish line, however, was placed on the other side of the valley, so there was one last kick. I dug deep and pushed for the line. Andrew did not contest, I'm sure he could have kicked at the finish, but chose not to. A Toyota SuperCycling 1-2 and we put 9minutes into the rest of the bunch.
Overall normalised power for the ride was 333w, with a VI of only 1.08, and less that 2% of the time spent not pedalling!
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