Big Induna Mi-Way Half Marathon

This last weekend the entire Mr Price/Scott team made the trip up to Hazyview from their various locations to compete in the Induna Half-Marathon which was one of the marathons in the National Series. This years ruling only allowed juniors to compete in the shorter distance (45kms), so it meant a long trip for a short race, but nevertheless I was excited. We arrived on Thursday night after a long day of driving and slept well. On Friday we checked out certain parts of the course and went over the river crossings. The race start/finish area was at Induna Adventures, and there was an interesting mix of forestry roads, banana plantations and thick singletrack forests.

Then it was race day. With Caitlin de Wet, Arno du Toit and myself all present on the front row, we looked the team to beat. This was my first marathon this year, and I was keen to give it a bash. The first tar section was too slow for my liking, so I put down a half hearted attack to split things up before the big climb. Then into the 2,1km climb only after a 3 min warm up. I sat on the front tapping out a tempo for Arno, teammate and series leader. We shed the pack quickly and towards the top section of the climb there were only five of us left. I opened up a gap to Arno and another competitor who was sticking with him and continued to push hard up and over the higher slopes. Then I had about a 30s gap and decided that this was my race as I was feeling super strong.

I went flat out for the first section of the race and as there was no immediate pressure, I flew into some single track pieces and really flowed. Then the race was almost over, I started to really enjoy myself and started catching some of the 75km participants who had started an hour before us. I hit the finishing 8kms which came past where we were staying and rode it time trial style till the finish.

Official Results

MiWay 45km Half-marathon

Men
1 James Reid (Mr Price SCOTT)1:41:00
2 Arno du Toit (Mr Price SCOTT) 1:45:19

Women
1 Caitlin de Wet (Mr Price SCOTT)

Well done to Caitlin for wrapping up the womens race in fine style. After the race I went with a few friends on the 75km course, and what a route! We got horribly lost and ended up spending another 2 hours on the bike, but it was awesome fun!

Till next time,