Ashburton National MTB Series #1 Meerendal
The Tulbagh leg of the National MTB Series used to be one of my favourite races. Tulbagh is a tough but beautiful place to mtb, however it seems Capetonians are adverse to travelling a 100km north to mtb when they have a choice of awesome trails in their own backyard so the organisers decided to bring the race directly to the Capetonians backyard in a bid to attract more participants. Meerendal - co-incidently the place where I started out mtb'ing and still often ride at, also the 2015 venue for the Cape Epic finale was the choice of new venue. A national series race in your own backyard is not something to be scoffed at, however recovery from my little "heart-mishap" was slow so I opted for the shorter half-marathon distance to ease back into the racing/funride scene. Beautiful morning at Meerendal The starting grid of a national series half-marathon is very different to what I'm used to, the usual racing snakes with expensive bikes at the