Cape Epic Prologue

Ben Sontag is a new member of Team Monavie-Cannondale and is currently racing Cape Epic with South African Jacques Janse van Rensburg of DCM Chrome.  Ben will be posting updates throughout the race to provide us a behind the scenes view of the biggest mountain bike stage race in the world. Keep in mind Ben is German and will be posting in English, feel free to make fun of his grammar but  remember he will have the last laugh as all the ladies love a German accent!

Ok, there would have been much better ways to start out the Cape Epic, than breaking a rear derailleur and running instead of riding 80% of today’s prologue. But stuff happens, and we, Jacques and me, are both positive that the during the next days we can make up this mishap.

Both Jacques and me started very excited into today’s prologue. After we went through the twisting start/ finish area, I passed the lead to Jacques, who is known to be one of the best climbers out there. The rumors were right and he put the hammer down. We were off to a fast start and after just 5min into the race we were passing the team in front of us.

Yeah, we made up a minute on them that quickly. The plan was to make Jacques push on the climbs and than I would lead the downhills pointing the line to Jacques, who has more of a road background. We made it save down the first downhill, but soon after at the start of the longest climb of today’s prologue, I just heard a horrible noise behind me. First I thought it was just the chain which dropped from Jacques bike, but his reaction sounded more dramatic and soon I realized that his rear derailleur was in parts. No chance to fix this mishap! I took a couple seconds for both of us, we were both shocked, but we realized that we need to keep going.

Jacques ran up the hills and on the flats and rolling sections I was pushing him. It took a while before teams start to pass us, we were going strong before, but soon one team after the other came by. It was a frustrating situation, nothing we both could do. Our only goal was to finish today’s stage and limit the losses. In the end, after 14 km of running and pushing, we finished today’s stage 24min down on Burry Stander and Christoph Sauser, who took the 1st victory of 2009 Cape Epic. Of course, we are disappointed, but maybe this mishap will made us a stronger team for the following days.

There is lots of racing ahead and we will try to prove that we belong to the strongest teams in this field. We didn’t asked for this “team bounding” extreme situation, but we will go positive into the next stages, since we still want to find out, how fit we are compared to this world class field! Tomorrow, the real Cape Epic start, which means for us, waking up at 4, drive 1 hour to the start and hitting 180 heart rate at 7am sharp! The starts are early and for tomorrow Jacques and I have to be right awake. After todays result we have to start in Block E, so we have to make our way through the field quick to catch the lead group, because that’s where we want to be in!!!