Read professional mountain biker Yolandi du Toit’s race report about the sixth round of the MTN National MTB series at Van Gaalen Cheese Farm below.
Photo: Zoon Cronje
The sixth round in the National MTB Series took us to the small village of Skeerpoort situated at the foothills of the scenic Magaliesberg Mountains.
Van Gaalen’s Cheese farm played host to the event and with the farm only being about 50km west of Johannesburg it felt as if I was racing ‘close’ to home for a welcome change.
Van Gaalen’s is a well-known mountain bike park in Gauteng and it offers safe riding on trails catering for various levels of skill and fitness.
The farm has up to a 100km of routes available extending over 30 private properties. After your ride or hike you can refuel at the farm’s restaurant or buy some local produce to take home.
In the past this venue has featured in the Nissan Trailseeker Series, which is the sister series of the MTN events and takes place in and around Gauteng, but this time around it formed part of the MTN National MTB Series.
The ladies field set off at 7.40am in -2 degrees Celsius to cover the 76km marathon distance ahead.
Luckily once you start racing your core temperature quickly rises making the low temperatures much more bearable. Or maybe it was more a case of brain freeze with the cold just not registering anymore.
From the start the route gradually ascended as we made our way to the first steep climb of the day. The pace being set on the slight incline reduced the field to only three ladies, Ariane Kleinhans (RECM), Robyn de Groot (Biogen CycleLab) and myself (Garmin) as we reached the bottom of “Concrete Collision”.
This climb starts with a concrete jeep track strip, continues on very loose rocks and finally it becomes a singletrack as you reach the summit.
I crested the climb in second place behind Robyn with Ariane on my coattails in third place.
On the “Dagga Pad” single track section which followed, Robyn and Ariane opened a slight gap on me which left me longing for a bit more confidence on the rocky trail.
Once spat out at the bottom of “Dagga Pad”, I had some ground to make up on the two leaders.
Read the full race report here.
