We thought its about time we do a write up about our Wednesday night Killarney racing which we have been hacking away at for the past three or so years. The racing around Killarney started in 2008 and has  grown  in popularity since then!

@Capcha Photography

When people ask why we trek out to Killarney midweek after work for what appears on strava to be a relatively “flat  and easy” hour of riding. Now at first glance they do have a point, the track is only 3.3km long with less than 15 meters of climbing per lap. What strava does not show you though is that its only an hour worth of suffering with about 90 of the fittest and strongest riders in the Western Cape. This ends up in a recipe for 55 minutes of your heart rate monitor telling you that you are above zone 5.

Besides picking up your fitness levels this series really teaches a lot of cyclists tight group riding skills which will really help out when racing on the road in future. The Wednesday night racing has now increased the field and now caters for both a scratch race and a plus one race.

This looks like Killarney, but is not.

So, who are the personalities that come out and play at Killarney racing? Teams wise this year the major Cape  Town racing teams are out there in force with Giant, Lights by Linea, Cycle Teknix, Alpha bodyworks, Peugot team (The blue and pink camo guys), Aurecon, CWC, and Pure Savage 😛

So who is the “Adam Hanson” of Killarney? The non disputed “Adam Hanson” is Neville Cragg with 685 efforts around Killarney, which is a large margin over the next most seasoned rider, Theuns van der Bank at 470 laps. To put it into perspective, Neville has racked up 2260km around Killarney alone, this is more than half a Tour de France! After a little bit of maths, Pure Savage as a team has racked up 845 laps around Killarney in total and a reported 37 “racing incidents”.

So who have been the fastest riders in the past few years around the track. Now, this is a very arbitrary measure, as it really depends on the weather and the peleton on the day that determines the KOM for the segment. So, overall the top spot goes to Paul-Dean Rorich with a 3:53 lap time around Killarney which was achieved this year. In 2014 the honour went to, Joshua Francis at 3:58, 2013 it was Neville Cragg at 3:58, 2012 was MC Dreyer with a 3:58, 2011 it was Jacques van Zyl with a 4:08, 2010 was Jurgen orzessek with 4:15, 2009 was Zayin Krige with a 4:27 and in 2008 it was Zayin again with a 4:21.

Some more interesting stats, the average speeds over the years has been rather constant, I think this can be put down to the fact that more and more cyclists are taking part in the racing in more categories.

*These stats only include what is on strava, as if its not on Strava, it never happened.