We arrived on Wednesday morning in Johannesburg. That was good as it gave us a couple of days to acclimatize to the heat and altitude. Our days prior to the race were busy with getting some rides in, trying to figure out the race course and then we also did a Q& A event at Cycle Lab. Cycle Lab is South Africa’s largest National Cycling Retailer means they are selling Fuji bikes too. The #CCTwitterRide on Sat morning was a cool& good warm-up for the race. The race on Sunday started at 6:03am, the race course was very hilly and the strong wind made it even more challenging. I did prepare for this race as good as possible and I also felt pretty good. But my last race was at the end of August so I had no idea how I would cope with the race rhythm. The bunch split up on the “long mountain” in the race. I had my problems in that phase and finished 32nd. The whole event was huge with 33’000 cyclists! After our race we rode and enjoyed a part of the “fun-ride”. The whole trip& race to South Africa was a very good experience. We saw a lot of new, crazy but also sad things. Big thank you to everyone who helped us out! Especially to Cycle Lab and Dave from Advanced Sports South Africa.
Patricia Schwager 