Our South African Adventure started really early on Tuesday, 7th of April, on exactly 1:45am - yes, that’s right, 1:45AM, not PM - in a little village just outside Nottingham. From there, Ryan, Australian racer Kate Potter from AQR Holidays and I were given a lift by Kate’s husband Ian Potter to Heathrow Airport - Ian was trying to catch an early ferry to France that morning. Since our flight was not till 8pm in the evening, we booked ourselves into www.yotel.com. It’s amazing that you can fit a shower, toilet, big enough bed for 2 and TV into a 7 square meter cubicle. Well, it was a little tight once we put our bike bags into it though… During the 12 hours we had to spend at Terminal 4 we used the free internet in our cubicles, watched some TV, became loyal Starbucks (one of the only 2 restaurants there) customers and even went for a short jog outside the terminal building to move our legs a little before boarding our long 11hour flight to Johannesburg, SA.

We arrived on Wednesday morning in Johannesburg, where we transferred onto a short flight to Durban where we had hired a car for the final hour drive to Pietermaritzburg. It took a lot of head scratching, screwing out a row of seats from the car and a few futile attempts before we were actually able to tetris in our 3 huge bike bags, 2 travel bags and 2 rucksacks and the three of us into the car.

Pietermaritzburg lies at 800m height and it is very hot and quite humid here. The area here is awesome, very lush and green. The place where we are staying is fantastic too and only a few km from the race venue. The evening when we arrived we headed out to the race venue to get a first taste of the course. It was late in the day and the air had cooled down a bit, just perfect for the pre-ride.

The course is 5.4km long, mostly wide singletrack, either on hardpacked terracotta ground or loose dry earth on the descents, absolutely bone dry and with a lot of very very steep uphill climbs and steep descents. It flows quite well and there is nothing supertechnical to be scared off. The climbs are so steep that it’s impossible to go up them easy and force you out of the saddle. Needless to say, there is a lot of climb in it - around 230 meters per lap. We did a few laps and got an early night to catch up on some sleep. All the courses (4X, Downhill and Cross country) are kept quite close to each other. The downhill and the XC course finish at the same spot and the XC course climbs up past the downhill course (that’s how steep it is).

Today was the first official practice day. And we practiced around the times when our races will be on. I was supposed to do 2.5hours around the course with a lap or two at race speed. I did an easy lap first and then tried to go hard, but it was so hot and humid, that it is virtually impossible to go hard without exploding. As soon as I pushed a little bit, my heart rate went sky high and the sweat was running down my face. It feels almost impossible to go really hard without your heart exploding. My legs didn’t feel much better either though, lactic acid building up really quickly and no power at all. Halfway through my “hard” lap I had to take a break and lie down for a minute. It’s also really hard to keep well hydrated. I think I’ve drank about 10 liters of water today and still feel thirsty. I went around for another 2 laps, but when I did my last lap, I was on the wrong gear (I was trying out different gears each time to see if I could power through the climb) on one of those steep uphills and fell exactly onto my handlebar that had turned so that I poked myself really bad into my stomach. I was in pain and felt a little nauseous, so I went to the medic tent to get it checked out, just in case. Seems like it’s just a bruise, thankfully. I was still in pain, so I decided to cut the training a little short and go out again tomorrow morning, earlier than today, to try and avoid some of the heat. Ryan was also suffering in the heat and we talked to a few people later on and found out that we were not the only ones. The heat and humidity is getting to everyone. Combined with a tough course where every climb is ready to push you over the edge, the race will definitely be challenging.