KZN Road Champs - 23 January 2011

On a cold and very wet Sunday 23 January, a small field of male Elite, U23 and Vets 30-39 lined up outside the Van’s hotel in Camperdown for the 2011 edition of the KZN road championships. Mr Price Vets team represented by Andrew Reeves, Mike Viljoen, Bryan Cusack and myself.

The race started at a very sedated pace for the first few kilometers as we all got to grips with the cold and rain.The first break in the group came as we turned left onto the Richmond road at Thornville, with most of the big names present. On one of the climbs toward Richmond the group broke further with a very select few in the leading group. Andrew managed to hang on to the main group, but Bryan and I dropped to the second group. We realized that Bryan had a good medal chance in the 35-39 category with only Brett Berriman from Cyclelab to contend with so we decided to go to plan B and work to protect his chance, as our main competition in the 30-34 category, Fego Coffees, was in the leading group and we had no chance of catching them.

At around 50km into the race we picked up Andrew that dropped off due to the fatigue in his legs from the previous days’ time trial effort. I worked hard in the front, driving the pace while Andrew recovered and we sheltered Bryan. On our second to last lap around the Van’s circuit, Burry Stander came racing past us as he put a lap into our group-he rode extremely well and went on to win the overall title by 3 minutes from Luke Roberts and Richard Baxter. Our race stayed together all the way to line with Andrew leading Bryan out to take a much deserved win in the 35-39 category. Good result for our team (even though that was plan B).

Thanks must go to Mr Price KZN for staging a fantastic weekend of KZN Championships as well as to all the marshals that stood in the pouring rain to protect us while we were riding.

Werner Venter