Rock the Jock

Having two days of hard racing in our legs the boys were
anxious for the final stage and what lay ahead. The third stage is an ever so
slightly easier stage when just looking at the numbers, 2km shorter and 200m
less climbing. Having checked the results Kevin was in 5^th, Marcus
in 6^th, Brendon 15th, Stephan 19^th, Johann 27^th,
Calvin 35^th and Delano in 44^th. The goal was to try and
improve and not lose time today.

Having missed our third of three sign on’s, we were ready to
hammer the final stage of the Jock tour. The neutral vehicle had other ideas as
he sat at a constant 25km/h for the first 6km because apparently someone had
complained some Cape Town team had dropped people in the neutral zone the day
before. Shortly after the neutral zone Kevin and Marcus opened up a gap and
Brendon and Delano sat up on the front of the group and let them go.

The first climb for the day was the Cat 2 Boulders climb,
with Kevin and Marcus up the road Brendon set the tempo on the front of the
peleton making sure Calvin and Delano were still there. It was easy to tell if
Calvin was still there as he sounded like Darth Vader eating a handful of marie
biscuits. The climb was through a nature reserve with a great road surface and
a tough 7% gradient. 

At the top of the climb a small group of favourites
attacked but were brought back on the decent.  Shortly after collecting the favourites group
we picked up Kevin and Stephan and also found out Marcus had set out on a 110km
time trial.

By the time we had exited from the nature reserve Marcus had
a 7 minute lead on the peleton. The thing that shocked us the most we the rapid
accumulation of accent during the race, it was the second day in a row we had
rocked up 1100 of climbing in 60km! At 75km into the race we had our first 5km
flat stretch of road the whole tour! At the end of the stage a climb that
rivals Franschhoek pass awaited us and therefore not too many people were ready
to bury themselves closing the gap on Marcus. (We definitely did not put the
hammer down to chase our own rider! We took selfies instead.) 

Kevin had a
mechanical that left him having to stop to fix the issue and Calvin burnt his
last matches pacing Kevin back to the group, at which stage Calvin yanked on
his ejector seat and went out the back of the group.

The group arrived at the bottom of the grand finale
together, Brendon set the pace from the bottom of the climb making sure that
all his riders could keep in the group. 

As the gradient kicked up to 9% the
favourites took over the pacing up the climb and Brendon, Delano and Kevin were
latched onto the breaks wheels. The boys managed to hold on to 1km to go and
with the gradient grazing 12% a small gap opened up with Kevin 15m off the
leaders and the other two another 40m back.

Over the top it was a full out hammerfest to the line with
only a few rollers and a long drag to the line left. Marcus had stayed away
over the climb and taken the win for Savage for the final stage! Kevin solo’d
the final sprint from the final climb while Brendon and Delano hammered it
together putting in some massive efforts. Stephan just got unlatched on the
climb and finished another minute down on Brendon and Delano. Calvin came in 15
minutes later and then rode straight home to the guest house over some more
massive climbs!

High fives, fist pumps and photos done the boys had to rush
off to get the bikes packed and themselves showered in 45 minutes. With some
questionable showers and bike packing complete, we put our tetris skills to the
test and packed 5 bike boxes, 3 wheel bags and 5 suitcases into our H1 and left
our villa for the last time.

The overall results were published before we had even got to
the airport that day, Marcus’s win had moved him to 5^th and pushed
Kevin down to 6^th, Brendon moved up to 13^th, Stephan 17^th,
Calvin 32^nd and Delano 37^th! Unfortunately Johann had to
abandon due picking up the flu overnight.

If you are looking for the results click Here

If you dig strava here is the days stage: STRAVA

Pure Savage would like to thank the Jock Your and Bestmed
for allowing us this amazing opportunity to race the Jock as we won the entry
at the Tour of Good Hope! The organisation of the event was really top notch,
everything from the effortless registration, the prompt starts, the amazing
water tables with cheering fans, the convenient lunch packs after each stage
which with a great team serving them fresh to the riders and most importantly
perfect timing by Racetec. We cannot stress what a difference this made
compared to the Tour of Good Hope timing, we knew our time as we finished the
stage, in the evening the overall results were posted to the website, all our
riders were recorded and all had perfect timing. Kudos to the guys that put
this together, was a really impressive Tour!

This really is the crown jewel of road stage races in South
Africa and riding it in a team with old and new mates made it even more
awesome, the two stage wins was also pretty sick!