Ride Magazine Crater Cruise - 101km MTB

This is one of the biggest MountainBike races in the country, and attracts plenty of roadies as well. It is relatively non-technical and fast - with much of the race on open sand roads.

This being the case, it is actually a very tough race. Long sections of corrugated dirt roads are incredibly draining, and the last 10km just seem to be 10km too far!

I did this race last year, and spent the following 3 days recovering! Having done the Epic this year, I was hoping that I would handle it a bit better. I hadn't ridden the mountainbike for a couple of months, so I wasn't really sure what to expect.

The start is a bit chaotic, with a long neutral zone. Everybody wants to be near the front when the sand roads start, so there is plenty of nervous braking and tyre touches going on. A short section of Jeep Track comes quite early in the race, which tends to break up the big bunch a bit. Unfortunately, there was a bit of a collision as the bunch hit the bottleneck and I got a bit delayed. Coming out of the Jeep Track section, I was in a small group not far from the leading bunch. We hit the first small climb at about 20km and the front bunch shattered. Things were getting a bit easier now, as the number of riders thinned out. The lead bunch was a lot smaller, and my chase group was about 8 riders at about 300m from the front bunch. It stayed this way for the nect 10km, until we hit the KOM climb. Right after this climb we turned off the road onto some narrow farm roads and Jeep Track and could no longer see the front guys.

The main climb comes at about 45km and is quite technical. Very steep and lots of loose rocks - not something I am very good at. I managed to stay with most of the guys in the chase group, but had a mechanical on the way down. My rear derailleur cable popped out of the frame cable guide and I had no rear gears. I had to stop and get it sorted out - losing touch with a lot of the guys in the chase group.

Fortunately, about 5km further there was a neutralised feed zone which a lot of riders stopped at. I was able to catch onto a group coming out of the feed zone. Now the tough part of the race began. A long section of single track (actually a quad bike course) along the river is very tough. Lots of short twists and turns, with plenty of humps which drain all momentum.

After the singletrack, there was planty of rocky dirt roads and undulating terrain, before finally popping out on the sand roads back to Parys. These roads are badly corrugated and the choice is between riding in soft sand on the sides, or corrugations in the middle.

A short section of tar precedes the last 10km of predominantly single track. At this point I was riding with a few of the DCM Chrome guys - Brandon Stewart having suffered a puncture and now just wanting to get home! I was actually feeling quite good, but we took a wrong turn, and ended up in the middle of a large field not sure which way to go. We could see some riders in the distance riding along the fence, so we headed that way over the veld, losing a couple more minutes.

By now I was really tired. The wind had picked up and I found myself alone, just trying to get to the finish. The last few km are all single track, but I was too tired to enjoy it. Finishing in 4h02 according to my Garmin. Would have been a good result had I brought my timing chip along.