![\"ccs-62657-0-73209100-1469769573.jpg\"](\"https:\/\/wp-media.bikehub.co.za\/production\/uploads\/2023\/02\/ccs-62657-0-73209100-1469769573.jpg\" "\\"\\"")
<\/a>Team Spur’s James Reid will be back to defend his 60km Illovo Eston Marathon title at this year’s Illovo Eston MTB Challenge which takes place at the Eston Farmers’ Club on Sunday 7 August. Paul Botma\/ Gameplan Media<\/span><\/p>\n\u201cI grew up here in KZN and I finally won the Eston race last year,\u201d explains Reid. \u201cHopefully I can go there again next weekend and replicate all those good feelings and try get another good result before I head off to Rio.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cIt will be nice to have Alan (Hatherly) at Eston too and it would be great to see guys like Max Knox and Phillip Buys possibly coming through for the event as well.<\/p>\n
\u201cLast year\u2019s race was a really stacked field and it would be great to have another hard, fast race again this year. The more fast guys at Eston the better,\u201d he adds.<\/p>\n
Known for the speed at the front of the field, Reid believes the Eston event \u2013 although a marathon rather than a cross country race \u2013 will replicate many of the elements of a cross country event, serving as good preparation for his all-important Brazilian clash.<\/p>\n
\u201cEston is always a super fast race and my winning time last year of two and a quarter hours is only approximately 45 minutes longer than a cross country race.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt is always interesting with the King of the Mountain hotspot prize right at the beginning of the race and then there is usually a sprint finish \u2013 which I\u2019m expecting will happen again this year.\u201d<\/p>\n
Having moved to the Western Cape shortly after matriculating from Kearsney College in 2010, Reid is currently back in KwaZulu-Natal for the final phase his Rio preparations.<\/p>\n
\u201cAt this stage you\u2019re looking for a simple, stable training environment and in the Cape you\u2019re permanently playing dodgems with the weather at this time of the year and having to work your training programme.<\/p>\n
\u201cI also love being in KZN and with the snow and the rain this week hasn\u2019t quite played ball, it is improving now and should be a great place to base myself for the last couple of days before I leave for Rio on 13 August.\u201d<\/p>\n
Through his Eston win last year and his recent crowning as national cross country champion, the Team Spur racer also brings good confidence with him into next weekend\u2019s KZN Midlands event.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe first five months of the year were action packed and was a fiercely contested qualification battle.<\/p>\n
\u201cI then went off to race in Europe for a bit and when I got back, somehow I managed to get it right for national champs \u2013 I was probably a bit on the euphoria of being selected for the Olympics.<\/p>\n
\u201cI managed to take a short break after that to try recover a bit and then it has been another big push for a couple of days here in KZN and it would be great to cap that all off with a good performance at Eston before I leave,\u201d says Reid.<\/p>\n
The 2016 Illovo Eston MTB Challenge takes place on Sunday, 7 August. Entries can be submitted via www.roag.co.za<\/a> and more information can be found at www.illovoestonmtb.co.za<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Defending champion James Reid has confirmed he will be on the start line of this year\u2019s 60km Illovo Eston Marathon, the feature race of the Illovo Eston MTB Challenge on Sunday 7 August, before jetting off to Rio de Janeiro less than a week later to represent Team South Africa at for the 2016 Olympic […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":41198,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[2443,2394,2408,2393,2157,1428],"featured_location":[],"class_list":["post-17814","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-events","tag-eston-marathon","tag-eston-mtb-challenge","tag-illovo-eston-marathon","tag-illovo-eston-mtb-challenge","tag-james-reid","tag-rio-olympics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bikehub.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17814","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bikehub.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bikehub.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bikehub.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bikehub.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17814"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bikehub.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17814\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bikehub.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/41198"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bikehub.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17814"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bikehub.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17814"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bikehub.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17814"},{"taxonomy":"featured_location","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bikehub.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/featured_location?post=17814"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}