Organisers of the Liberty Waterberg Encounter have slightly shortened the overall distance of the three-stage race, but route director Mel Meyer has promised it will still be a rigorous test for the entrants.<\/p>\n
Taking place near Bela-Bela in Limpopo, the mountain bike race from June 9 to 11 is the second in the Encounter Series, following the successful Liberty Winelands Encounter in the Western Cape last month.<\/p>\n
Meyer said the decision to limit the event to two race villages, at Sondela Nature Reserve and Elements Golf Estate, had allowed them to design a more compact route.<\/p>\n
“This has enabled us to add a much better mountain bike feel to the first day, rather than the longer route we used previously that meant there was more road riding to get the cyclists from point A to point B,” he said.<\/p>\n
“This time we have used a minimum of properties to create the trails and this will give the riders a real flavour of the bushveld in the region.<\/p>\n
“The wildlife in the areas adjacent to the trials is amazing.”<\/p>\n
He added, though, that the amount of single-track would ensure a strong challenge, particularly once you considered the climbing that had to be done.<\/p>\n
“Make no mistake, the 62km route with around 800m of ascent means it will be no picnic and even the faster guys will have to pace themselves.”<\/p>\n
The second day will see a clover-leaf route from Elements and Meyer said they had been busy preparing plenty of new trails over the 54km distance.<\/p>\n
“It is the shortest of the three stages, but 1 100m of ascent will still give it a lot of teeth,” said Meyer.<\/p>\n
“We have been able to develop some amazing single-track on Elements over 23km and we have changed the Shakana climb to do it in reverse.<\/p>\n
“There are also some new trails which have been built in the Shakana area so that should be a good experience for many of the riders.”<\/p>\n
Meyer said the final stage of 59km would provide a comfortable finish to the Liberty Waterberg Encounter, in partnership with STANLIB, with a highlight being a new stretch of single-track in Sondela.<\/p>\n
“There is some ascent, as well as a sandy patch for 3km which I like to call \u2018horizontal climbing’, but we have a new 14km section in Sondela which riders should enjoy.<\/p>\n
“It’s quite flat and fast, giving you a nice boost to the finish line in the reserve.”<\/p>\n
Go to www.waterbergencounter.co.za to enter or for more information.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Organisers of the Liberty Waterberg Encounter have slightly shortened the overall distance of the three-stage race, but route director Mel Meyer has promised it will still be a rigorous test for the entrants. Taking place near Bela-Bela in Limpopo, the mountain bike race from June 9 to 11 is the second in the Encounter Series, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":58746,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"tdm_status":"","tdm_grid_status":"","fifu_image_url":"","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[1743,2633,2632,2594,2634,1944,2115,1945,1747,2298,1815,2373,2237,2597],"class_list":["post-6009","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-more-sport","tag-asg-events","tag-bela-bela","tag-liberty","tag-liberty-waterberg-encounter","tag-limpopo","tag-mountain-bike","tag-mountain-bike-news","tag-mountain-bike-race","tag-mtb","tag-mtb-adventures","tag-mtb-news","tag-mtb-race","tag-route","tag-waterberg-encounter"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6009","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6009"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6009\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6009"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6009"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6009"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}