Penny Pinchers Classic MTB Series - Timer for a bit of climbing!

I think it's fair to say that the winter season is fast approaching and as the weather starts to change for either better or the worse, depending on what your flavour is during the riding year. With that comes the tapering of the season, well for only for a short time, considering there is still one or two big ones happening slap bang in the middle of the year. 

But there is a series which starts on the 7th April 2013, and is something of a different series, not in the sense that the series is different to any other series, but more in the sense that, the first race of the 3 races is considered to be arguably the toughest climbing race in South Africa.

When I heard this, I was quite intrigued, as I wonder what the organisers base this on? The elevation as per the photo below, shows steep climbing, not doubting this for a minute, but again what are they comparing this to. Well looking around, and doing a bit of research and after seeing the other races in this kind of category, that being the 45-50Km races, this does seem considerably different.

One can see why they say its arguably the toughest!

From the above profile, one can see this race starts off straight away into a 500m climb and it does not seem to end, even at then it seems to end on a climbing. So what can this tell us, well pretty much the fact that the Penny Pinchers Classic MTB Series Race # 1 is about climbing and that's what is all about. However, this is all speculation at this point. I can say that looking at the profile, 2 things are for certain, climbing and spectacular views, which is 9 times out of 10 what makes the race worth it. 

The Easter Weekend brought on a little bit of training for climbing and saddle time, as the last time I was on the bike was the Lighthouse Challenge (unfortunately I missed The Vines race) so it was a good weekend for riding, to get the legs working and to start getting use to the winter weather which is def around the corner. 

Picture courtesy of my trail running girl Vix!

Vix taking some awesome shots of Easter Riding

Breathtaking views on in Cape Town

Weekend Riding Anyone?

Following the first race will be the Race #2 - Hottentots-Holland Classic on the 12 May which will be 42Km and Race #3 The Greyton Classic (also has a nice Trail run, so hope to see you runners out too) on 15-16Km which will also be 45Km. The profiles are similar but compared to the first race, these seem a lot less climbing, which means the good news is the toughest one is over first.

Hottentots-Holland 2012

 

Greyton Classic 2012

Overall, I think this will be a great series and more importantly a great training and build up tot eh Knysna MTB, which finally I have entered and looking forward to competing in the 2013 race, and have some fun!

As always play in the mud and stay dirty!