Sneeuberg Crawl 2019


December 2014, I was scrolling through Bikehub.co.za and discovered a "Sneeuberg Crawl" thread on the Bikehub where "Josias" posted :


"Het my eerste 100km race gedoen, het die baie geniet! Tussen Graaff Reinet en Murraysburg."


I have never heard of "Sneeuberg" nevermind the "Sneeuberg Crawl" before was immediately intrigued by the idea of doing this 100km mtb race in the middle of the Karoo (just like people & water, cycling events in the Karoo are few and far in between), but unfortunately the date always clashed with my cycling highlight at the tail end of every year - the Stellenbosch Cycle Tour. With the Stellenbosch Cycle Tour moving dates to January finally 5 years after seeing the bikehub thread I had the excuse to make the trip to Murraysburg.

With my parents as company for the long road on the N1, we made the 600km trip from Cape Town to Murraysburg on the Friday. Murraysburg is a typical little old Karoo town, slightly run-down, a bit left behind by the rest of the world, peaceful and quiet. I took some time in the late afternoon to explore the town.

Lamp poles in the middle of the street
Early Saturday morning I reported at the town showgrounds for the start of the Sneeuberg Crawl. It was a small field of riders, mostly locals and a few making the drive from places like Beaufort West, Bloemfontein & Riversdal. The local NG dominee started proceedings with a quick message from the scriptures and a prayer and then we were off

The first 20km's were on the R63 road to Graaff-Reinet, the field might have been small but the pace was brisk, in the front a group of about 8 riders were leading the way averaging about 30km/h with the local traffic officer accompanying us on the right hand side of the road.

After 20km we turned left on the plaas Voetpad (owned by the family of one of the riders in my morning training group), our group was down to 5 now and it was fast riding on the jeep tracks through the firm. With a right hook we were back to the R63, crossed the road and onto further jeep track in a southerly direction towards Sneeuberg in the distance.

 By now another rider have dropped off and there was 5. Me and 4 locals. For a brief moment I was in the lead, only to promptly take a wrong turn in a farm yard. Nobody followed me, luckily it took me only a few seconds to realise I'm now on my own and not because of my powerful riding (In hindsight I'm certain it was a cunning strategy from the locals to make me take the lead because they knew I would get lost..). After a long chase I managed to catch up again and thereafter I made certain I was at the back of the group whenever we approached a farm yard.

Happy Sneeuberg Crawler - not me

About 45km into the race we turned onto a district road which would take us past Sneeuberg back to Murraysburg. We were on a gradual climb to a plateau near Sneeuberg. By now we were 4 and after a steep climb to reach the halfway point we were 2.

Sneeuberg


I knew from the route profile the 2nd 50km is a net downhill and according to the weather predictions with the wind at our backs so I expected a fairly easy gravel ride with a sprint finish at the end. However my companion had different plans and turned on the pace. I had to dig deep to hang onto his wheels, furthermore the predicted the wind turned out to be in the opposite direction into our faces so we had to work hard for every kilometer.

My companion spent most of the time upfront, he was clearly stronger than me but not quite strong enough to drop me into a headwind. I was hoping the time up front would tire him out but no such luck. When we reached the R62 5km's before Murraysburg he just clicked into another gear on the tar and left me for dead.

I rolled over the finish line in 2nd place in a time of 3h28m, just more than a minute behind the winner. Beautiful route but extremely fast, suffered a good deal more than I anticipated! Had a great experience riding the "Sneeuberg Crawl", would love to be back one day. Maybe next time more of a "crawl" to take in the surroundings











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