Riding, not Racing!

I've done 2 extremely muddy Sabie Xperiences, and kind of decided to not do it again because of the damage to the bike.

But when Fiona and Doug and Gadget (my freedom Challenge riding buddies in Joberg) all said they're gonna be at the Sabie Xperience preride, and with Dawn and Dave unavailable for playing, I realised I could either go with, or have no riding buddies for that weekend.

I have been tempted to do the preride before, but intimidated by my own (lack of) ability and what i've read from other people about the speeds that they do these rides at

Couldn't get leave for the Friday (due to a new product launch that didn't seem to fit in with my riding plans)

Left the office at 2-ish on Friday afternoon, only to be prevented from going anywhere by William-Nicol Traffic. Left Gadget's place at 5-ish. More traffic-woes, and we were free. Quick phone-call to Fiona confirmed that the day's ride was muddy and wet and long and awesome. Doug was battling with a cold, though, and didn't ride Another phone call to Steve (Honey) whe is lucky enough to stay in that area nowadays - also looking forward to the next day's ride.

We checked in and found the house-mates to be Colin and Graham - Colin, with whom i shared a downhill or two in Waterval-boven and a few other places - but more importantly, who has cycled events like La ruta de los Conquistadores and Trans Rockies - a LEGEND. and Graham, who has toured lots of the freedom trail SOLO. another legend.

It promised to become another weekend of cycling with legends, listining to their stories and admiring their bikes.

Woke up Saturday morning with the smell of freshly brewed coffee - Graham came prepared! We lubed the bikes, got our wind jammers out, and off we went. Doug was not looking well at all, but who can blame him for wanting to come with?

Out into the fog and through the pine plantations and through the fog. Admiring wooden specialized bikes, listening to stories, dodging mud-puddles, and just generally being alive.

Stopping for water, junglebars and bananas - then climb some more. A flat tyre, a cold that got the better of Doug, who opted to get into the ambulance - then climb some more. Wait at the top. On rare singletrackies, send the fast people first- partly so that you can see where the dangers are, but mostly for the enjoyment factor of all.

Up on to the reserve, and then on the level before the descent started. We had an ambulance, so

No mud-baths where 1000 cyclists went before you.
No queues on singletracks, and therefor no-one who jumps queues, and no-one walking perfectly ridable obstacles.

Some downhill at last, release the breaks and just go. The Trance's shocks were pumped a little too hard (due to the 6-hour-event the week before) and it handled even more unstable than i remember the hardtail - probably only because i haevn't been on the hardtail for a while!

Anyway - so we bomb down this hill and that - up that little climbie, then down again, and too soon the ride was over.

Washed the bikes, had an humungous chelsea bun (the size of a chocolate cake, really!), and then got clean to go watch the rugby in a pub.


Gadget organised some chicken liver pasta for supper - yummie!!!!

Then Sunday morning, more riding!

Doug looked a lot better, but wisely decided not to ride.
So we bid him farewell, and off we went - 'n climb on tar, some downhill, a wicked steep long breathtaking climb - and what a pleasure that it was ridable - mostly because there was no mud-bath where 1000 bicycle have gone before you, and the pathe was not full of people hiking up the mountain with their bikes.

Breathtaking climb, breathtaking views, awesome people. I wanted to be nowhere else.

More singletrack, more climbs, more downhills, a little mis-happie on a slippery climb that left a big gash on my knee, some attention from the medical team, more singletrack, more general feel-good-ness and alive-ness.

Too soon the ride ends.
Get clean, and head for Dullstroom for some pizza ans other fatty unhealthy foodstuffs and beer and hot chocolate.

Part of the reason for the ride is that the medical team can see where accidents are most likely to happen - and to work out their evacuation plans for the main event. There are 3 vehicles, so depending on the number of people who wants to ride on the day, there can be a maximum of 3 groups. People falling off from the fast group gets picked up by the slower groups. Your R100 per day's riding includes permits and a medical team that follows you in a car wherever possible - and who carries water and some energy drinks, junglebars and bananas. And priceless, the AWESOME riding buddies in what is one of South Africa's greatest mountain bike destinations ..... I'm afraid the Sabie Xperience 'main race' won't see me again.

But the preride .... i will be there next year. And i'll get leave for ALL the days of the preride.

THIS is the ride to do.
THIS is what mountainbiking is about (for me, anyway).

Mission accomplished

2009's 94.7 done and dusted.









I broke the rear derrailleur cable on the Mountain bike ride on Saturday. Saw Doug afterwards; he explained a little about how to replace it. Also bumped into Lesley, Brett and Chris, was good to see you all!

anyway - the cable was broken and the Trance only had 3 gears. And it was the day before 94.7. I phoned a friend, and Gadget kindly agreed to fix it for me. While he was at it, he replaced the bent jockey-wheel (how and when did THAT happen) and the front rotor that was bent since Ride2Rhodes. Luckily I had all the spares lying around in a bike-box since last year's Sabie Xperience, and topped up for Ride2Rhodes.

Was difficult to keep the bike appropriately muddy while having to replace stuffs on it.

So the bike was like new again on Sunday morning.
It was a quick 1-hour cycle to Karen's house - she stays just about where the races starts - and then a long walk down the hill with cyclists racing up the hill.

A few phone calls to collect DK and Agteros (a hubber who used his cold as an excuse to ride with us) and off ... and finally it was time to go.

One false start, as the wind brought down the blow-up thingy at the start - but then we could go.

Loved the bit on the M1 - Chris and Lindsay passed us - Chris wearing the same bright-green shirt than on the mountain bike ride the day before - says he has 5 of them. Also chatted with a few D&D-ers along the way.

The city-loop was SO cool - a few climbs, but none TOO bad. Old buildings, places you'd never otherwise see. Francois decided he's done enough waiting, and sped off into the distance. David decided he's gonna finish the junglebar before starting to ride again. So we left him.

Finally we hit the speed-sections of Jan Smuts.
Realised we were in cut-off danger when we left the waterpoint just in front of the Cartrack Building with 15 minutes to spare, an the one on Malibongwe with 10 minutes to spare.

At the next waterpoint, Karen's legs was hurting, so we decided to stop for a quick massage. Quick wasn't so quick after all, the queue was long and moved slow. We left that waterpoint well after the cut-off (didn't get our numbers taken because we were in on time)

Now the race was on.
Agteros fed Karen some energy gels, and we took turns tu push and pull. We slightly missed the next cut-off, but due to some technicalities got through. We raced hard and made the next one with 7 minutes to spare,. We knew we were safe, but the adrenalin was pumping, so we skipped the last few watertables and chased straight for the finish, which we made with 20 minutes to spare.

thank you dk and agteros for the help!

official time was 6:22.
Thought you had only 6 hours to complete the race, so fully expected a DNF. But the results show on racetec, yaaay!

Capestorm Rogaine

The concept: you get a map with points marked on it, more difficult points has higher values. Collect as high a score as possible within the allocated time.

Saturday was the 6-hour foot rogaine. Cindy is a brilliant navigator, and she just ran straight to the controls every time.




The 5 hour mountain bike rogaine the next day was a different story: I'm known for the proportions of my navigational errors, and Dawn hasn't done this before. I used everything Cindy explained to me the next day, and between Dawn and myself we managed to find the controls with only minor detours - AND had lost of fun along the way - there's some very good cycling at Lakenvlei! (and some mud, depending on route choices)



Lovely spot prizes from Capestorm, which includes a very green marathon t-shirt that i'll be using a lot to cycle with!

work gets in the way

With the launch of a new product at work, I had to choose very carefully how I wanted to spend the very limited amount of free time available: cycling or blogging.

Naturally, i chose cycling.

Being a corporate firefighter, work will always interfere with training and playing schedules. So how to train for an upcoming 24-hours, or a JoBerg2C, or a possible cycle tour to Everest base camp, and still keep the clients happy - so that you'll be able to afford the adventures?

Some of my solutions:

Commute
Cycle to work.
Nobody loves traffic. So use that traffic time, that's wasted anyway, to cycle to work and back. There might be great off-road-possibilities between home and work, and you arrive at work in a good mood. Add detours if the distance is too short. It also is a good excuse to buy (and test) some decent lights for the bike (you need it for the 24 hours anyway)

Run after work while it's still light
So, you have to stay at work till long after it's safe to cycle through Delta Park all on your own.
Pack your running kit in, and go run in the late afternoon for an hour. Running is good for ... something ... Feel the freedom of running with a huge grin while everybody else is stuck in peak-hour traffic. Leave the ipod at home - use the running-time to think of nothing - and arrive back at work with fresh new ideas on how to tackle the problem that you were stuck on just before the run. Use running-days to stock up on hours at work, so that you have negotiating power for when you want to leave early the next day to go on your nightride.

Daylight savings: Cycle in the Dark
Being a mountain biker, i try to limit running to only those days when there's nothing else to lift my endorphins ... you need a car at work for various reasons (a trip to the bike shop during lunchtime for a new bottom bracket, for example) - so you can't commute. Enters night rides.
You bought the new lights for the commute anyway - might as well then go use it somewhere.
- The MTN bikepark is open on Tuesday nights till 8. Arrive at work early (or use credits built up during running-days) and leave early. Enough time for a few laps in daulight, and then put on lights for some night-fun. At night there are no wizz-kids pointing and laughing at you on the BMX-track, and nightriding helps a lot with skills (you're on the obstacle before you saw it ... nothing you can do, so just ride it)
- There's also the Dark & Dirty crowd that leaves on 19:00 on Thursday evenings from the Irene mall. This is arguably Gauteng's coolest crowd, and you will go home late, dirty and happy. Traffic from Jo-burg to Pretoria made it impossible for me to attend those rides, but as soon as the workload lightens, i will go that way again to fill up with endorphins. I will not, however, give up the commuting, night-riding in the bikepark, and running :)

oh, and get a rain jacket.

adventure sprinting

When AdventureLisa phoned me to ask if i'd join their team for the kinetic sprint, I knew i was in trouble - both lisa and debbie are very strong runners, and i've been concentrating on cycling for a while. oh well, do it anyway!

There were 2 running legs, 2 cycling legs & an obstacle course. We could do it in any order, but not 2 cycling legs after another. We started with a short rogaine-style run through the centre, followed by a very pleasant cycle on some dirt-roads in the area. The next run-leg was urban-styl in a gym! Lisa ran 1 kay on a treadmill, I cycled 1 kay on a spinb-bicycle, and debbie paddled away on a rowing machine. was great to cheer my buddies (and members of competition teams) on while waiting for my own turn. The last cycle was quick and lovely with some singletrack thrown in. Lisa's a brilliant navigator, so finding the controls was a given :)

here's a picture of us afterwards - yes, that's us on the top of the podium!

Newbies graduating to true mountain bikers

A new standard for Newbie Mountain bikers was set on Saturday when a few Mountainbike-newbies set out on a 94.7 training ride on their mountain bikes.

The main aim of ride, a joined venture between Cartrack and Momentum, was to introduce newbies to the thrills of mountain biking.

'I wanted to learn how to ride a bicycle', explained Vivek Bhimma, 'but then I allowed myself to get talked into riding the 94.7.

Bhimma was one of the riders who set off from Emmarentia dam early on Saturday morning. The ride started out with very unstable wobbly bicycles, but by the time they came back, they were negotiating roots, rocks, narrow bridges and gnarly drops like it wasn’t even there.

When they reached Republic Hill, a mountain known to have reduced hardcore mountain bikers to tears, they insisted on cycling all the way to the top. The mystery of why everyone wanted to go up, was soon revealed: It seemed like the newbie-riders were all undercover-downhill-riders. ‘That was fun’, Noleen Erlank explained as she reached the bottom of the hill with a silly grin.

The group later insisted on cycling up Delta Park Hill as well, just so that they could come down again. The customary coffee-break later in the day was also cut short so that the riders could go play again, this time through the botanical gardens.

‘I will be back’, Bhimma declared after the ride.

The next training ride will be on Wednesday 2 September at Kyalami.


In the picture: Karen de Vries demonstrating that she would be able to take a gap in a big bunch of cyclists with perfect aim on the bridge.

Birth of a MTB-hooligan

During the 2-odd weeks after Ride2Rhodes, while the RASA-guys were still on their way to Diemersfontein, I got very grumpy when there wasn't fresh news and blogs when I arrived at work. Mountain biking was, therefore, pretty much on the radar at the office when entries for the 94.7 (roadie event) opened. Fueled by Tour de France fever, and with the 94.7 route passing right by our offices, it was easy to convince the marketing people that our company simply have to enter a few cyclists and make a big party out of it.

A few fellow IT nerds agreed to ride with.

The team:
- A regular gym-spinning class-chick, who doesn't own a bike (probably never has) - no worries, i have an extra. I even have a roadie bike, so if she could manage that one, then she could ride on it and I'll ride on the hardtail.
- An ex-teacher ('I taught, nothing scares me') that tries anything at least once - he hasn't been on a bike for about 10 years or maybe longer, but no worries, his brother has a mountain bike and a helmet that he could borrow.
- An expectant dad who played BMX-BMX a long time ago, there might be a rusty old bike somewhere in the garage.

All of them smokers, although the expectant dad did give it up when he found out that his expecting.

K, so I kind of knew what they were in for. They probably didn't.

Groenkloof was going to be the first training ride.

So the soon-to-discover-mountainbiking x-teacher-IT-nerd-dude get on the borrowed bike and oh dear! The bike doesn't want to stay upright, it's wobbly and all over the place. On the first piece of single track he entertain us with a very nicely escaped endo, luckily no blood or broken bones. A few more near-endo's follow. He complains that the track is too narrow, and that there's too many rocks, and the track is too twisty, and why does it go uphill. Oh dear, what have i done, what was i thinking.


At the first (minor) obstacle the dude stopped, investigated, hesitated, and - most impressively - cleared it. With the same silly grin on his face that I see so often on mountain bikers' faces. Somewhere in the middle of the ride I saw a photo-opportunity and stopped to get the camera out. But the IT-nerd-dude ride straight-faced straight over the obstacle. 'What could i do, it was in the way', he said matter-of-factly. Oh dear, what have I done!

By the end of the ride there's a huge grin on the dude's face.

The next week Gadget Boy phoned. He's still nursing a sore knee from RASA, and not allowed to cycle. But he's going to Northern Farms, do I come with. Yes, and I bring the newbies with, to slow down the pace and respect that sore knee.

I had to go to a bike shop to get a tube, so invited the newbies with. The IT nerd dude decides that smoking is cheaper than cycling.

But on Sunday morning, he pitches at the ride with a brand new helmet.

The spinning-chickie gets on the bike. Promptly breaks a nail when trying to figure out the gears. The chickie is way too short for the (small) hardtail, but we lower the saddle, and off we go.

The IT nerd dude has a huge silly grin on his face. Downhill, some gravel to ease into cycling, then hit some single track. Both of them are riding with grins now (the expectant dad had to work - some IT nerds have to look after the machines while the others play)

Gadget Boy entertains us nonstop (and I mean NON STOP) with RASA stories. We ride single track and up and down and more singletrack and twists and turns. The grins get bigger.

Towards the end of the ride we approach that little droppie that goes into the tunnel underneath the highway. I know of a few collarbone-incidents there. There's a chicken run to the left, but it's still a rather scary drop. Especially if it's your second ride in 10 years. The IT nerd dude gets off his bike ... checks out the drop, picks a perfect line, gets on his bike ... and clears the freakin' drop!

With a huge grin on his face we ride that very sweet singletrack after the droppie, and then up through the trees - there he gets off, too tired to ride any more ... but on Monday morning the grin was still there.

A new mountainbiker is born.



ps next week's newbie ride is Saturday morning 9:00, starting probably close to the Botanical Gardens. Newbies (or RASA-riders nursing injuries) - let me know if you need details :)