Alistair Schorn gives us his view on the new format of the Old Mutual joBerg2c‘s stage five in this installment of Confessions of a Weekend Warrior.
Alistair Schorn
For the first time in the seven-year history of the Old Mutual joBerg2c, the race village for day four was shifted from the Winterton Country Club to Emseni Camp just outside town.
This made the fifth stage 20km shorter than in the past, but, while this might seem a welcome relief, the consensus among the riders that I spoke to appears to be that they would have preferred to have ridden the extra distance yesterday than today.
Emseni is the home of the Berg & Bush stage race, which takes place in several different forms across a week in October. As such, many of the riders are familiar with the venue.
However, on this visit, it appeared that, apart from the catering, which was excellent as always, there were some logistical and other challenges.
The structure of stage five was also somewhat out of the ordinary, with a batch start on a neutral 16km section, primarily on tar, into Winterton. Then a second start to the racing stage proper after a bit of a delay, depending on how quickly everyone arrived in Winterton.
All these factors combined meant that the racing only started at around 8:15 and, with a tough 100km to traverse to the stage finish at Clifton Prep School in Nottingham Road, it turned the day into an unnecessarily long one.
I’m sure that, in my case, the day was made considerably worse by the after-effects of my crash on stage four. I must confess to having a few sense-of-humour-failure moments today, particularly close to the end when the weather started turning foul.
The cold and rain that blew into Nottingham Road in the afternoon must have made things thoroughly unpleasant for those riders at the back of the field.
At the same time, though, the fairly cool and overcast conditions throughout the stage probably assisted the race organisers in getting most riders through the day.
I reckon if this stage had been as hot as the previous day, or as in previous editions, there might have been a lot more riders not finishing.
From my point of view, and it seems that I’m not alone, I would be more than happy to see stages four and five revert to their previous routes.
Or, if this isn’t feasible, for stage five to be a normal racing stage without the manufactured neutral section and restart in Winterton.
In any event, tomorrow we have a completely new route to look forward to. From what I’ve heard, it looks to be really awesome, so hopefully that will serve to alleviate some of today’s lingering painful memories.
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Alistair Schorn has been racing bikes since the mid-80s – before most of today’s mountain bike pros were born. He bought his first mountain bike in 1992, but only took up stage racing after coming back from overseas in 2004. In early 2014, he was bitten by the singlespeed bug, which is still firmly entrenched in his system. His favourite places to ride include Mpumalanga and the Berg (definitely not on a singlespeed though!). As an escape from his day job as an economist, Alistair moonlights as a writer for publications such as In the Bunch.
