Well it's January 21st and I have already raced three races, the most important of them was the Hyper to Hyper road race done yesterday. The first two races were just some small local races which I raced well, with a killer 10k bridge to the break in the first and in the second I was demoted to touring the race after a mid-race crash in which I was separated from the pack.

    The real reason for writing this is to report on the Hyper to Hyper road race. This is a 100 kilometer road race from the Pick 'N Pay Hypermarket in Southern Johannesburg to the city of Vaaldam to the south east. I was invited to ride to the race with the HSBC Cycling team, a DIV III UCI squad, with some very good riders. I meet the team at Spinmania, a spinning shop owned by the teams director sportif, a 5am to ride to the race start of 6am.

    I arrived at the start 15 min before we were to leave, which I hate doing, but the ride there took longer than expected. I rushed to find my number at registration and then scurried off to the race start while digging to find pins for my number. "Oh crap" I tell myself, there aren't any pins to put my number on. So with some quick decision making I put my microchip transponder on my leg, take off my arm and leg warmers just as the bunch rolls out for the start.

    Before the race I was warned about how hard the race start was, not so much as it's fast, as it's a steep 1.5 k climb up to the silver ball (a big water tower which can be seen from almost 30k away on a clear day) and this is only 3k into the race. Well I move up to front of the group in the top ten before the climb and start off feeling pretty good. This feeling however lasted only about 30 seconds as the HSBC team along with Team Microsoft pushed the pace into overdrive. I began to suffer bad, before the start of the race I had about 23 hours of training in my legs and I was going just a little slower than the group. So with 200 meter to the top I was off the back, but managed to limit my loss to only 50 meters to the back of the pack. I chased with a group and easily caught back on during the decent toward the highway.

    The rest of the race was relatively flat with just a few hills hear and there. It was mostly a gutter fest on the crosswind sections. We cruised at around 50kph most of the time and with only one serious break going early and being caught I was content to stay at the back and chill out until the sprint. I wanted to make sure I could finish strong.

    As we approached Vaaldam the race began to speed up, the big name players were moving to the front and I decided I should be at least in the top 20 now. I kept a nice place at the front, not too much in the wind, but far enough to the front I could move up and stay up front easily. I didn't have a clue as to where the finsish was so I was guessing all the time and using the amount of speed and work of the big name teams to judge where it was going to be. Well I miss-judged and thought, "It has to be in the next 2K." Just then a big sign on the side of the road said, "5K to FINISH". I wasn't going to be staying top 5 for the next 5k and moved to about 10 back on the outside. I used one of the HSBC guys to judge distance as he was radioing to his teammates how far to the finish.

    With 2k to go I started to move up and I was only 7 from the front when I felt a tug on my jersey and I was immediately moved back about another 7 spots. A rider, number 2, had just sling shotted off my right side by pulling my jersey. Very pissed at this rider I sprinted up and boxed him in on my right side, so he just moves off to my left behind me at 1.5k to go and does the same move again on my left side now and then does the it again to another rider about 4 in front of me.

    I then moved across to the right hand side and sprinted to the line as fast as I could after being slowed down twice. I ended up in the top 10, out of 233 starters. So not to bad of a finish for a mid-January race and a lot of training already in my legs.

    I come to find out the rider #2 was actually JP van Zyl, a world ranked track rider and extremely fast sprinter in his own right. He ended up taking 2nd place in the race, being beat out by Robbie Hunter, the very fast Lampre-Danskin sprinter and Velta de Espana stage winner.

    I was very happy with my sprint and race. I can feel all the training I have been doing coming together in the next few months and some good times and racing to come. Well this is all for now … to all keep the rubber side down and have some fun.

    -Gregg Germer-