Stihl & Cycle Lab Midmar Notts road race - 25 September 2011 - by Andrew Reeves

The Mr Price Vets team that lined up for the start of the Midmar Notts 80km race comprised of Bryan Cusack, Emile Fouchè, Gwyn Pine, Andrew Reeves, Werner Venter and Mike Viljoen. Team strongman Sean Merredew was away at a mountain bike race.


The start was a calm affair with a relaxed rollout. The weather was cool with a steady headwind on the way out. The first attack came after a couple of kilometres from Martin Atterbury, he was soon joined by Robert du Preez and Nic Smith. The 3 got a decent gap but the headwind was hurting them and Nic came back to the bunch at the bottom of Happy Hill.


Werner Moolman and Andrew Hill then turned up the pace on Happy Hill and the 2 Marty's riders were caught by the top.


The headwind was slowing the bunch and not many riders were prepared to commit to pacing on the front. A few individual attacks went off the front, 2 attempts from Emile, but nothing was staying away.


Just after Nottingham road we hit the 3 climbs and Bryan rode hard on the first climb to soften up the bunch. Some attacks went off the front on the second rise, and Mike was in one of them.


The bunch was not happy though and all moves were pulled back before the turn around.


As we took the turn around we saw the leading Tandem, having started 10mins ahead of us, was now only about a minute ahead. Gwyn started getting excited and, together with Werner Moolman, decided to hunt the Tandem down.


And so the speed went from 30km/h on the way out to 60km/h on the run back. The downhills and tailwind were making the speeds high and the carrot of the Tandem was keeping it fast. The tandem of Andrew and Leon held the charging bunch at bay until after Nottingham road but were then caught.


This now meant that attacks would start, after a few attempts, one from Werner Venter, a good move of 2 Cycle lab riders went clear. This meant Fego and Mr Price had to chase, although Fego only commited one rider to the chase. The one Cyclelab rider dropped from his teammate who now had a 30sec gap on the bunch.


The Mr Price team put in some strong pulls and brought back the Cyclelab rider Brett Berriman, but as he was caught with 3km to go Fego's Deno van Heerden countered hard and I hesitated to see who would chase.


The bunch was now tired however and that hesitation would cost us the race as we had a case of Deja Vú from the last Midmar race when Mike Adey rode away in a nearly identical way to win solo.


Deno had about 5 seconds on us at the line, I hit the corner first but Brett Berriman surged past me to take 2nd, giving team Mr Price a 3rd with a charging Mark Davel taking 4th.

All in all it was a good race and tactical lesson learned.


PS: If you want to sprint against Bryan, be ready for some elbows and knees...