Day five of the 2015 Old Mutual joBerg2c was touted as a recovery day after a couple of long stages in the saddle. But says, Alistair Schorn, it turned out to be tougher than expected. Follow his account of the highs and lows in his blog post below or read more at Confessions of a Weekend Warrior on In the Bunch.
At the previous night’s race briefing, Wappo and Farmer Gary described day five of the Old Mutual joBerg2c as a recovery day, but I think I would be right in saying that, for the majority of the field, it was anything but!
Alistair Schorn says day five of the 2015 Old Mutual joBerg2c was not the “rest” day it was touted to be.
A more accurate description would have been to call it another proper hard day, with plenty of steep climbing and plenty of grinding, up and down rolling district roads, with barely any of the technical riding that made day four such an experience.
I’m also pretty sure that despite what Wappo and Gary said, they pretty much knew this would be the case, as evidenced by the fact that they decided we would need a “Red Ambulance” waterpoint with around 10km to go.
I’m not sure whether the change in race village venue from Glengarry to Clifton Prep in Nottingham Road made the second half of the route any harder than in previous years, but I can’t seem to remember the last 30km being as tough in the first edition of the event. But maybe I’ve just gotten soft in the intervening five years.
In my case, I had a fairly horrid second half of the stage, where it felt like my legs had been left behind at the first waterpoint. In spite of this, I was able to enjoy some of the highlights of the stage, like the scenery around Wagendrift Dam and the river valley that followed it.
Also, as promised by Gary, we did get to ride through some beautiful dairy farms close to the end.
My sense of humour failure was then complete when I managed to take a slight tumble in the most innocuous place possible – at the top of the last hill before the descent into the finish, right in front of the bagpiper! Although I can’t blame him or his bagpipes for that!
The new race village at Clifton Prep is a total winner – a beautiful setting, great facilities and ever-helpful pupils, staff and parents.
I think we all hope that it will be home to a joBerg2c race village for many years to come (in which case Gary and Wappo will definitely have to come up with a route to match the venue . . .).
Read previous Confessions of a Weekend Warrior
Read next Confessions of a Weekend Warrior
