tufties

tufty (n): a grass tuft right in the middle of singletrack, with no way to miss it, cos there'd be another one right next to it. usually found on fresh singletrack. hardtail-unfriendly. hard work, especially when combined with a bit of mud.

also a term used for people riding tufties, e.g. "joberg2c is strictly for tufties only."

joberg2c day 2: 707 km to go

Day 2: Frankfort to Reitz
95 km, 749 m vertical ascent, in a gentle 6:10

Reitz, it's cold. it's a little better than this morning, when it was cold AND wet. today was most likely the easiest stage of all - less than 100 km and less than 1km ascent.

we started in the rain. there were a few 'tufties', lovely track next to a railway line (and on the track, when it got too muddy next to the track).



oh, and some mud. here's one of the river crossings that caused the grinding paste:



a waterpoint where they washed and lubed the bike. the cold & wet weather & riding with a cotton longsleeve shirt together with not eating caused the team mate to bonk rather severely - it was very slow going till the next waterpoint. they had nicely salted steak off the griddle ... when finally i could persuade the team mate to eat 'junk food' (potatoes, steak, donuts from the water tables) in stead of race potions, he recovered quickly :)

we followed a bit of boring gravel ... and then the bike suddenly came to life: some awesome singletrack, first a little climb, and then downhills, jumpies, a little bit of gravel, and more down. some gravel road into town, and some singletrack to the showgrounds. the kids took my bike to wash it - then they dragged my bike to the tent, and they fed me. the getting clean i unfortunately have to do for myself ... i'm shivering, but there's unlimited hot water, so i think i'll go over there now (life is tough)

joberg2c day 1: it's finally happening!

Suikerbosrand to Frankfurt
121 km, 943 m vertical ascent (and one river-crossing by dragonboat)

Some district road, lots of swamp and tufties that was hard on the bum and legs. A long roadie-type district-road stretch to the vaal dam, where we paddled dragonboats to the other side.



the bikes went over by speedboat:


after this, it was a long hard slog through lots of tufties and swamps. The Reitz-kids cheered us in, washed the bikes, and fed us a local delicacy: fish! (in the free state, yes)

ps
albert - your buddies broomie and grant say hi. here they are in the dragonboat-queue

It is Time

finally.
thursday morning.

it's too late for training now.
gps coords to the start is punched into the gps
confirmation for stay in scottburgh is printed

how on earth am i gonna squeeze everything i want to take with, in the tiny little bag that they gonna give us? and how am i going to drag the ton to the tent every night? hmmm maybe i can throw some of the stuff out .... i'd possibly get by with 3 sets of cycling kit in stead of 6 - and i don't need 4 pairs of gloves - k, let me go re-pack (again)

now where did all these butterflies suddenly came from?

an outrageous birthday party

The Hardies always dream up, and pull off the most outrageous parties. Last night was no exception.

It was Clinton's birthday (he'll be forever one of my heroes for giving us D&D)

There were cupcakes,


sparkling wine,




helium-balloons,




chipmonk-laughter


and lots of horribly good singletrack.

and the mandatory hot chocolate at the spur afterwards.

Happy birthday Hardy!!!

Lost in Da Bush

'Twas adventure racing time again, this time with one of my favourite teams, Lickety Split.

The weekend started with a fuel tanker that blocked the highway out of jozi, and Con swearing to never ever EVER go away on a weekend again.

But that was soon forgotten when we hit the open road and Adri took out pizza, cinnabon-ised muffins and cookies.

We arrived just in time for race briefing - then set up camp in Mankele's camp site.

Race started early on Saturday morning with a quick run to a mini-waterfall - would have been quicker if the mankele singletrack was plotted on the maps, though ...



We than transitioned on a cycle-leg that took us on some of mankele's sweetest singletrack, hike-a-biking up koppies and bundu-bashing through Lantanas. Here's the team (sans the photographer) discussing route options before we left the tar ...



We found controls 3 & 4 quickly. Here's Adri and Will dragging a bike up to control 4.


Control 5 was easy to spot - the paths leading there, less so. Here's Con & Adri running up to the control.


It was a bit of hike-a-biking up to control 6.



We couldn't find control 6 anywhere (we later found out it was about a kilometer off where it was supposed to be) so we took a picture to proof that we were there:


On to control 7, but that one was also misplaced. We heard afterwards that some teams phone the organiser, who directed them to the correct control. Here's some bikes of other teams also searching for the control:



K, so by this time we lost a little enthusiasm and decided that while we're unofficial anyway, we might as well just go for the 'cool' controls. We purified some river water, then headed off to 7. Found it quickly (and where it was supposed to be) and then on to 8 via a sweet singletrack-detour.

Here's will taking a nap at the top of the mountain, just before we clipped control 8.


And then it was a serious downhill that left the bikes with scorching hot disks at the bottom.



The we searched a parking lot for a control that ended up being in a tree about 50 m from the parking lot :(

Here's Adri at the river crossing (where we heard that the last cycle leg was cancelled)



A quick cycle to the transition, and on to the next hiking leg. We decided to go for a finish and a braai, rather than collecting all the points - so only collected one next to a river, and one at the top of the downhill course. Here's the view from the top of the world:


... and here's the whole team at teh finish - just before the sprint to the swimming pool.

Mankele

Spent the weekend at Mankele - not riding the tracks, but criss-crossing them on foot and on mountainbike in search of adventure racing controls on Saturday. On Sunday morning, while Will was cooking up a storm of a breakfast, the other team members explored the cross-country tracks on sunday morning - WOW what a cool place!!!

For R50 pppn you get
- a camping spot
- warm showers and a communal kitchen with kitchen stuffs
- cold showers outside, for you and the bike after a mudday ride
- permits to all the trails
- well-marked trails for all abilities and training needs
- tubes, if you want to go tubing

Here's a summary of their trails ... and here's a map (it's a rather big pdf)

I will certainly take another weekend or 2 to explore those routes.