Absa Cape Epic

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All in a Week’s Work

Rebecca Rusch / 03.04.2009

The Cape Epic has been over for 5 days now and I’ve been struggling to write the final report. Not because I have bad news to report, but I’ve just been busy catching up on sleep, eating food that is not squeezed out of a bottle, getting a pedicure and making the 36 hour jaunt home. Eight days of high intensity racing in a row have taken a toll on me.

Overall, the race was harder than I expected. The competition was stiff, the pace was high and so were the temperatures. Matthew and I had a solid race and we worked great together as a team. Although I had originally been hoping for a podium finish, instead we were only able to pull off 6th in the mixed field and 45th in the general classification.

I was feeling a little disappointed in our placing until I looked up some results from last year. Just for reference, 45th would have placed us in 3rd in the mixed division last year. The 5th place mixed team this year was 2nd last year. In 2008, Christina and I were also riding in about 150th place in the general classification before she broke her collarbone. So I was riding much higher in the field this year. The course this year was also shorter and all of the divisions rode approximately 15% less time over 8 days than the course last year. I do think the longer stages in 2008 suited me better as well.

Perhaps it seems futile to pull up these comparisons and statistics in order to justify my experience. However, this race was an important training tool for the season and a gauge of how my winter training has been going. At first glance, I was really disappointed in my performance and was having some serious doubts about my fitness. After deeper analysis and realizing that this year I was riding in the top 50 teams out of 600 each day, I have been able to get a more realistic look on the benefits of this event.See All Event Posts