The Cape Epic Journey

I have managed to get some quality training rides in while I have been in CPT. Using my cousins as a base between my office and the mountain – in particular Tokia Forest. After Thursday mornings climb fest I had a bit of a sleep in and got the office nice and early as I was going to sneak out early to go for a ride with my cousin Kevin. I have not done much riding with my cuzzy because every time I’m down in CPT he has to work….at least this time the timing was spot-on and the two of us managed to get in 3 quality training rides together.

Ride number 2 of my stay was on Friday afternoon with Kevin. We had the standard “not a race, just a training ride” chat and off we went. Unfortunately we both have this “Alpha Male” syndrome and it became a race…well more of a hard ride than a race but the pace was furious! We basically sprinted up the first climb in Tokia that Kevin calls “Asthma Hill” and turned to face my nemesis….a short, steep section of single-track that I have never managed to ride up. I followed Kevin (who made it up without a problem) and ended up losing traction on a root and had to walk the rest of the way… L More on this little climb to come!

We ended up riding up to Silvermine and then turned back to race down some of the awesome single-track in Tokia. I wish I had a helmet camera to show you all those tracks and the drop-offs! Really awesome stuff!

Stats for the ride:

Time:  1hrs 59mins

Distance: 36kms

Climbing: 525m

Average Speed: 19 kph

Saturday morning:

We had a lazy start to the morning after spending the night with an old school friend of mine for a braai – I inhaled 500g steak for dinner…..nom nom nom nom….needed to fuel my body for a BIG ride.

Kevin and I left mid morning in some serious heat to take on the Mast and then go back down and up to Noordhoek Peak in Silvermine. We took it nice and easy as it was very hot down at his house but the temperature fell from 30 to 17 degrees at the Mast!!

We started as usual up Asthma Hill and then turned to that nasty little uphill. I said to Kevin that if I don’t make it today I can’t call myself a proper mountain biker! With that as motivation I changed down into my granny-gear (yes it is that steep) and powered up the hill and let out an almighty “YES BABY!” when I got to the top!

Now that I was a “proper mountain biker” again we took on the final part of the climb to the Mast. It was very windy and little misty….physically it was a tester of a climb in those conditions but we did it in good time. From there we turned and made our way down to Silvermine to do a loop of the reserve and climb up to Noordhoek Peak. Our legs where feeling the pace and I was running low on fluids…. I left my water bottle with ice-cold energade in Kevins garage because I was fixing my slippy gears and dodge rear wheel before we left…..

We made it around without any major hassle and then turned back to Tokia for some play-time in the single track before heading home.

Stats for the ride:

Time:  3hrs 59mins

Distance: 59kms

Climbing: 1415m

Average Speed: 16 kph

Sunday in Heaven!

Kevin took me to a special place on Sunday….we went out to ride in Jonkershoek in Stellenbosch. I was feeling very tired after 3 good rides already and some serious climbing. We spotted (what we think) was Christof Sauser and some other guys kitting in their Specialized gear going out for a road ride!

When we arrived at Jonkershoek we wasted little time and got stuck-in to a 7km climb up some awesome single-track. Flowing corners, switchbacks, rocks, steep descents, steep climbs, soft sand, logs, it had it all! That was only the first 7kms!!! This place is awesome! After reaching the top of the single-tracks we got onto a forestry road and followed it skywards! The climb was brutal! Very technical and great Epic training!

We eventually found ourselves at a dead-end and had to follow our tracks back. Not the end of the world because we just found another fork in the road and followed that! We came to another single-track that was closed because of “Fire damage and Forestry”. Being from JHB I lead the way and pretended to have not seen the sign….my bad behaviour was rewarded with a walk down a steep sandy, dusty slope because the single-track was indeed damaged by fire and forestry….nice on Horndog.

After Kevin and I successfully got off the mountain without hurting ourselves or the bikes we got onto another dust road where we just turned over the peddles till once again we went up! Kevin took me to another great single-track to end off our short but excellent ride.

Stats for the ride:

Time:  2hrs 15mins

Distance: 25kms

Climbing: 600m

Average Speed: 13.5 kph (lots of climbing!)

Strange to think that the next time I’m in Cape Town it will be for the Epic!

40 days to go!!!!!

I’m down in Cape Town yet again for work but like always I make sure I have enough work to justify a longer than normal trip and make sure it includes a weekend so that I can get some quality saddle time in! 

My first ride down here is one my favourites! Definitely not for the faint hearted and one the Worm will have to do before the Epic! It is up to the Constantia radio mast…..lots of climbing! My ride unfortunately was not the greatest. I am being plagued with issues from my rear wheel. I have just had the axel replaced (again) and had the hub serviced but it feels so stiff! At least I have new rubber on my bike so I’ll corner like a champ again! 

I rode from my cousin’s place close to Constantia. Hit some of the short climbs and some single-track in Tokia forest and then got into the guts of the climb up to the radio mast. Great views from up there! The climbing was really tough going with the stiff rear hub and to make it worse I was having problems with my gears…felt like I was a pregnant yak climbing a steep icy slope! 

Stats for the ride: 

Time:  2hrs 8mins
Distance: 38kms
Climbing: 915m
Average Speed: 17.2 kph 

More rides to come!

So I’ve been pretty slack in updating the blog, but the good thing is I haven’t been slack in my training. The training is going good and I can feel the improvement all the time. My climbing is starting to get back to the level I want it to be at, and hopefully it will improve a bit more.

This past weekend I rode out at Breedts again. It’s becoming quite a regular ride now, but I’m glad that we change the ride almost every time we go out. It’s good because we won’t be building muscle memory. This weekend we did an 80km loop. It’s basically the normal 60km loop, but you go through a little game farm which adds on the extra 20kms. The details for the ride are as follows:

Time:  3hrs 51mins
Distance: 80kms
Climbing: 1035m
Average Speed: 21.3 kph

On Sunday I ended up going out to Bultfontein with Big Blade Doug to do the Babbas Lodge race. I haven’t done this race, so was quite looking forward to it. All I can say is it is a very fast race. Doug and I decided to take it pretty easy. We started near the back and just rode at a nice easy pace. It rained the night before so the soft sand wasn’t so soft, which made the riding a bit easier. Will definately be out there again to do the race though. It’s not very technical, but if the soft sand is in full force it will  be good training for the Epic, which has LOTS of soft sand. There are 1 or 2 technical climbs, but nothing much else to challenge the rider. In the end I think I came in 61st which was just in the top half of the field.  The details for the race are below:

Time:  2hrs 49mins
Distance: 67.2kms
Climbing: 510m
Average Speed: 23.8 kph

Will be out at Breedts tomorrow doing an 85km loop with roughly 1500m’s of climbing. Might do the loop through the game farm on the way back which will make the ride just over 100km’s.

Hope you all have a good weekend of riding.

Last week was a tough one! Spent a good couple hours in the gym, got some great rides in as well! This weekend the weather let me down a bit…..the worm and I were going to go ride Breedts neck (with all the usual suspects) but at 4am when I woke up…it was wet! I was not going to make the 60km odd drive to Breedts if we were going to get rained on so instead I had some breakfast and packed up my road bike, got in another 2 hours sleep and made my way to Suikerbosrand to do the big loop from the hotel. What a ride! Lots of good climbs! It did start to rain towards the end of the ride but that wasn’t too bad!

Time:  2hrs 24mins

Distance: 57kms

Climbing: 1145m

Average Speed: 23.7 kph

Sunday morning was another early start. I joined another mate of mine (Paul) at Northern Farm for a ride. I was a bit nervous to go riding there…recently there have been a number of bike-jackings at Northerns. They have beefed up the security but our route was going to take us outside the relative safety of the farm to the dust roads on the outskirts. Needless to say the pace was furious! I’m glad to report that it was an incident free ride! One thing I must comment on is the BELTER who was there riding with some of her mates…..words fail me at this point!

 Time:  2hrs 47mins

Distance: 51.5kms

Climbing: 700m

Average Speed: 20.4 kph

After missing out on riding last weekend due to some really rubbish weather, I was totally amped to ride this weekend. Sadly I didn’t manage anything worth calling a ride on Saturday. So I was raring to go for Sunday’s ride.

As usual with the Breedts ride we get off to an early start otherwise you risk riding in extreme heat. We’ll start riding a bit later closer to the Epic though, as it is good to do some training in the heat. For now though, it’s an early start.

We started out nice and easy, well it felt nice and easy, but when I checked the speed we were going we were averaging around 23km’s an hour. This is already pretty quick, especially when you are going to be doing 100+ km’s.  What’s more shocking is that by the end of the ride we were averaging close on 25km/h. This means that in the second half of the ride we increased our speed! Given we didn’t do both sides of Breedts this weekend, but still that is some seriously impressive riding.

Hats off to the guys that rode long hard rides on the Saturday as well.

Doug and I have a little surprise in place for this weekends ride at Breedts. I have to to say that in the JHB area, this ride is close on the best training ride you can do for the Cape Epic. Long, tough climbing and heat that can be ridiculous, and then there is the non-stop killer head wind. It always manages to change direction when we turn to head home.

BRING ON SABIE!!

Unfortunately I don’t have my stats for the ride yet, as I haven’t uploaded them to my laptop yet. I’ll do that tomorrow and then update this post.

Another week closer to the Epic and another solid weekend of training! Sabie Experience is due in a little less than 2 weeks (12 days) from today which will be a nice way to bench mark our training to date and it marks what is effectively the start of the heavy training for the 2010 ABSA Cape Epic.

This past weekend I covered 190kms on the bike and spent 9 hours in the saddle .

Saturday: (Suikedrbos on the road bike)

Time:  3hrs 2mins

Distance: 70.2kms

Climbing: 980m

Average Speed: 23.9 kph

As I have said before in this blog, riding on the road is probably the least exciting thing you can do on a bicycle but I did manage to hit a new personal record top speed of 85.9 kph down one of the hills! That was fun! I rode from the circus in Walkerville to the Suikerbos entrance where I met Craig on his MTB. He was meant to hook-up with some of his colleagues for a training ride but they were the other side of Suikerbos…Craig and I rode hard (well I rode at a decent pace on the road bike and Craig pushed like mad!). We completed the lap just within 2 hours. I really take my hat off to Craig – he rode really well in very windy conditions! I rode solo with a head-wind of note back to the circus to complete my ride.

Sunday: (Breedts Neck)

Time:  6hrs

Distance: 119.6kms

Climbing: 955m

Average Speed: 24.2 kph (on a mountain bike that is moving!)

We had all the usual suspects together (Team Just Jockey made up of Andrew and Craig, Worm’s brother Barry, Single-Speed Doug and of course Worm and Horndog). I must admit I was feeling a little nervous of the pace after my ride on Saturday…I didn’t feel too bad until we passed the 50kms and got close to the big climb of the day up Breedts Neck. I was really impressed with Craig – he was very strong for the duration of the ride and Andrew (who is used to doing short super-fast racing) also had a very strong ride. Worm took it all in his stride and didn’t even break a sweat! Barry was also very strong – sure he is going to smash Sabie! My legs faded and I suffered for most of the ride…they came back to me towards the end but still not a nice feeling! It is good mental prep I suppose. Let’s not forget the class act of the Breedts Neck ride – Doug. Holy smokes! All power, big-blade all the way! Definitely teaching the younger guys a lot of respect!

What a ride!!!! The worm and I were taken on a training ride of note by our mate Doug! 132kms from Hartees out and over Breedts Neck and back again. An Epic ride and one we will be doing a lot in the near future!

Stats for the ride:

Time:  7hrs (had a few stops to stock up in liquids and to eat )

Distance: 131.6kms

Climbing: 1420m

Average Speed: 21.5 kph

The route took us past Pecan Wood on a stretch of tar for about 15km’s then it was rolling hills in the big ring (blading) all the way to the base of Breedts Neck at about 55km’s. As we hit the climb ol’ Worm showed his class on the climb up Breedts Neck leaving us all in his dust! After a Peanut-Butter saami break we went down to the other side of the mountain stopped for a coke, heard an interesting story about the mountain from one of the locals then made our way back to the top again! The 60km ride back to Hartees was not easy due to a savage head-wind! Great day out in the saddle!

Some good news to report is that I have been reseeded for the 94.7 road race so that I can start with Worm at 7:21. We look forward to your support at the race!