Sani2C here we come ...

Finally! I have managed to wangle an entry into the Sani2C which is about 4 times oversubscribed or at least if feels like that and, in addition, those that did it last year have preference. I had actually given up on getting in when a friend of a friend of a friend twice removed decided that he had had enough and was happy to give his entry to me. All I had to do was do a substitution and pay vast amounts of cash (R7k). Yes, that is right over seven thousand rand to go live in primitive conditions and punish myself to the point of exhaustion for 3 days in the foothills of Kwa-Zulu Natal!

Having finally obtained an entry Carl decided to join me after having talked to other people about the Sani2C and been told by all and sundry what a great race it is. I think the Sani2C is a bit like children; everyone tells you how wonderful they are to have so the gullible go ahead and have them ... only to find out that it's damn hard work and they don't go back in where they came from! Now that they have both misery and children it is their duty, having been duped themselves, to perpetuate the myth so that, in time, they too can come to enjoy others' misery!

So first up Carl had to get a new mountain bike which he bought brand spanking new; what a wonderful feeling, I imagine, to ride a new bike as shown below.

... and the same bike, now two hours older and not so new anymore!

So that was it, first mud, first inelegant dismount which I missed seeing unfortunately.

I'm actually feeling a little bit apprehensive about the sheer volume of riding that I am going to need to do in order to have an even vaguely comfortable Sani2C. Oh well, nothing ventured nothing gained!

Out and about in Mpumalanga

A most disappointing day! We were to start in Graskop but, again, the mist was too thick so we drive through to Sabie where it was marginally better. We holed up in a restaurant while we waited for the mist to lift and the rain to stop but eventually I just thought, "Oh what the hell" lets just do it.

The reality of "Long Tom's Pass" is that it is friggin steep for a very long period of time and this was starting from half way up; thank goodness we didn't start from Hazyview. I think that that would have just a bit much. As it was we only did about 7km before "she who must be obeyed" said that enough is enough and that it was far too dangerous. The photo below was taken when I was only about 20m away from the camera so the cars that were doing 60km/hr would only see us at the very last second.

And that, was pretty much the weekend. We spent some time having a really good lunch at Dullstroom but other than that it was a pretty uneventful drive home.

Notwithstanding today I think that we got some really good training in an I have a suspicion that Carl, in particular, is going to be quite enamoured with long distance riding.

Out and about in Mpumalanga

The next morning we were up bright and early for the "easy" day starting in Graskop and heading north to Bourkes Luck potholes and back; a relatively civilised 70km of medium grade riding.

Arriving in Graskop it was covered in heavy mist and Harries Pancakes kindly let us in to have a cup of coffee even though they weren't actually open which was greatly appreciated. It was clearly(?) not going to be a good day to ride from Graskop but luckily for us the proprietor(ess!) happened to ride and recommended a "very" nice ride which has a profile as below!

She was correct about one thing; the ride out was awesome. It was just the return trip which was a bit of a bugger. Carl and Jason forged on ahead while Hennie and I consoled each other at the back. It's a fantastic ride in between the pine trees with the occasional views through the mist and the rain. Really nice to ride on a really good road with wide verges; just made for riding on.

This was on the way back, we had to make it look like we were in less pain that we actually were!

Back at the silk farm we relaxed for the afternoon before a really nice braai for supper. As the token vegetarian it always amazes me that I seem to end up doing the meat incinerating thingy; I mean it is not like I actually have any real interest in whether or not I incinerate the dead cow!

The kids had such a ball in the jacuzzi even though it wasn't heated that they all looked quite prune by the time they got out.

After supper we had long "solve the problems of the world" conversations before people slowly started dropping out as their eyelids got too heavy. Eventually it was just Jason, myself and Dierdre left until 11:30 when I called it a night. Jason finally succumbed at 12:30 and I am really happy that the "R" word only really turned up after I had departed for bed.

Out and about in Mpumalanga

I have been alternately looking forward to and dreading this weekend. Looking forward to it because I think it will be a great weekend but very worried about how my knee which has been misbehaving quite a bit lately will stand up to the multi-day abuse.

Thursday rushed by as it always does when one has far too much to do and way too little time to do it in but I finally managed to get around to buying a bike rack which can tilt which means that I will be able to open the back door of the fortuner without taking the bikes off - a major plus! I don't know what I was thinking but for some reason I thought that it would be assembled so it was a bit of surprise when the first thing that fell out of the box was the instructions on how to put it together sooooo ... we were a bit late to pick Carl up and very late to pick Jason up.

As it turned out it didn't really matter and we have a very smooth and uneventfule drive out to Mashishing which, for all you old south africans, is Lydenburg although it was promptly renamed by Hennie to "ama fishing" in honour of the traditional sport practiced in these parts.

We stayed at Malapo Country Lodge which purports to be a 4 star lodge and while it was very nice and comfortable and I really have no complaints at all; 4 stars seems an awful lot for what is essentially self-catering accommodation.

The next morning we were up bright and early to tackle the route shown below; note the altitude climbs and you're just going to have to believe me on this, they're tougher than the graph looks!


Of course we had to have the obligatory group photo while we all looked fresh and cheerful.


It wasn't long before we had our first "incident" of the weekend, the road directly outside of Mashishing isn't great and some moron in an oncoming two ton truck decided to overtake and gave us the choice of becoming roadkill or coward. Jason hung onto the last two inches of tarmac but myself, carl and, I think, hennie took the coward option and bailed off the road and onto the dirt shoulder. Road bikes don't work so well offroad it turns out! Caron, who was following us in the fortuner, was half on and half off the road and although the truck missed her altogether, it was close enough to smash the right hand mirror just from the wind as it went past. I have never seen this before in my life!

We carried on, my knee aching quite a bit, and I kept on aiming for the next 10km to re-assess whether to carry on but it was never quite sore enough to actually give up. Possibly due to the schedule 3 anti-inflamatories that I managed to get hold of. Robbers pass was great but we soon split into two groups, the eager beavers up front (Jason and Carl) and the "I will survive" group of Hennie and myself at the back; far away at the back.

The four of us back together with the pass way down in the distance. The photo lies, it is far down!


Over the top of Robbers pass we went and then we had the exhilarating (73km/hr top speed) downhill all the way into Pilgrims Rest which has so far escaped the fetish for renaming places. We had a brief break at a "creperie" in pilgrims with Carl looking particularly grim although one wouldn't have thought so from his performance on the next hill which was the one out of pilgrims. The start of the hill is really, really steep, so steep that it is difficult to keep the pedals turning even when standing and all I had to say was "only another 10km's of this" to elicit groans of resignation from the congregation. Although the climb out of Pilgrims is steeper it is, mercifully, much shorter and was over quite quickly and then all we had was another great downhill all the way, pretty much, into Graskop where we stopped for the day.

Kirsten was driving out from Johannesburg on her own and only arrived in Graskop after dark so Carl and I went to fetch her from there because finding the silk farm at night wasn't such an easy task. We had supper and retired quite early pretty knackered from the day.

A funny thing happened on the way

In one of the newspapers this weekend there was a really great article about someone who was fed up with the number of potholes in our roads and the incompetence of the municipalities in maintaining them so he planted about 100 trees, one per pothole, in and around bloemfontein I think it was. This sounds like a great idea to highlight a problem but I didn't realise that I would fall victim to a pothole the very next day.
This morning I did a 2:45 ride with Jason and Sam and at one stage Jasons orienteering skills let him down and we ended up riding across some mowed grass to get back onto the path. I wasn't concentrating too hard and rode right into a hole dug for a tree but the digger had forgotten to plant the damn tree. The grass had grown and pretty much covered it so the first thing that I knew about it was when my front wheel went in and I went head over the handlebars - much to an oncoming mountain bikers amusement. I didn't actually fall very far; it was more like the bike just disappeared from under me and I skidded to a halt having landed chest first on the grass beyond the hole. Very undignified but nothing hurt or broken so no real problems although my head is a bit sore at the moment.
Having experience the first hand effects of tree holes without trees in them I am in complete agreement that potholes really need to be greened!

Dischem Ride for Sight 2009

Well, the day finally arrived after what seems like ages of training for us to ride the race. I picked Carl up at 05:30 and Hennie and Hannes were meeting us, also at carls at 05:45. Carl and I were waiting outside and we heard a motor gunning it down the road and I said to Carl "Here's Hennie" as a car roared past the front gate. "Obviously not!" quipped carl and I had to agree although i did see bicycles on the back of the car and the odds of that happening at 05:45 on a sunday morning have got to be slim. Two minutes later Hennie reversed back to the driveway looking sheepish at having missed a house he has been to dozens of times.
We drove in convoy out to Boksburg stadium for the 116km long race which fortunately doesn't contain any real hills but it is still 116km long which is a good days riding. We decided to stick together and ride as a group which we pretty much accomplished for the majority of the race.
Up until the 30 or 40km mark we just rode at our own pace and didn't realise that we had attracted a big peleton of about 50 riders all tucked in behind us; it felt quite good riding at the head instead of lurking in the pack like I normally try and do. About the first 60km is gently downhill which is great fun but at about 40km I got a puncture - the second in a month which is a lot for me as I normally get punctures quite seldom. After fixing the puncture I didn't check my brakes and as a result spent the next 70 odd kilometres riding with the brakes rubbing. I don't know how much of a difference it really made but I can say that I struggled over the last 40km. In the end; Hannes and Carl finished together with me a couple of minutes behind and Hennie another minute or so behind me which is actually great that we all finished so close together. I actually think that Carl looked the freshest afterwards. Hannes, Hennie and myself were all knackered but now that there is some distance between me and the finish line; it really is a great race to ride. Highly recommended even though I spent the rest of the day recovering and even a bit of monday.

Boep Club 2008

It's a terrible thing to have to admit but I get together with a few like minded guys while the wives are at book club to drink whisky, smoke cigars and generally chew the fat. After a while this acquired the unfortunate name of "boet" meaning "brother" club which has since been corrupted into "boep" meaning paunch club. I think the book club think that they're very clever! At the end of each year we have taken to going away for a weekend which is proving to be quite a win. This year we buggered off to Sondela for the weekend; five christians and me, the token atheist.

Sondela proved to be an inspired choice of venue because it's actually a game reserve but with no predators so one can walk, run and cycle everywhere so the mornings would start off with a two or three hour cycle followed by loads of nothing, a braai for supper before we settled down to the real reason for coming to Sondela ...


The first cycle ride on the saturday we had but a small taste of the sand that was to come on the sunday; fortunately we were blissfully unaware of our fate at that stage so we thought the deep sand was pretty cool and experiential. The wildlife at sondela is pretty chilled and you can get quite close to them before they move off as you can see from the next photograph.

Although this looks quite far away they weren't more than 20m. We saw nyala, zebra, giraffe, kudu, eland, warthog and wildebeest which made for quite a satisfying morning. Actually one can't lose by cycling in the park, if you see game it makes the ride and if you don't you still get a great ride to enjoy. The afternoons were spent slumming it at the pool which as you can see looks decidedly dodgy ...

Just next to the pool in the picture was a large heated spa pool with jets'n all which we migrated to in order to get out of the sun of course. We were all sitting in the pool when a group of young afrikaans boys (approx 13 years old or so) asked to jump in and when they did so the pool overflowed which led to the usual jokes about fat people and water and in one of the lulls in the conversation we heard a quiet "Ja rynauw" from one of the boys to another which had us all laughing. There is definitely something about afrikaans and humour that english just doesn't have, I can't quite put my finger on it but somehow jokes and banter are just that much funnier in afrikaans.

Back to the lodge for the traditional bush supper of meat suitably singed; oh and a potato and some green stuff as a concession to me. Here we have hennie striking the traditional south african pose as he tends to the fire.

We were there for three nights and each night the menu was identical and did anyone complain? No, did anyone even notice that we'd eaten the same on all three nights? Again no, but if there were the wives with us would there have been complaints? Absolutely and not because the food wasn't good nor balanced but it simply wasn't different; guys just don't get this need to have different food all the time. We're actually quite happy to have the same meal for at least 3 or 4 nights at a time. Two weeks might be pushing it but changing every night definitely isn't necessary as long as the food is good.

The next morning hennie, carl and myself went for another ride which would prove to be quite a learning curve about riding in deep sand. There is only one word for it; don't! We struggled up these gently sloping hills sweating like pigs in the hot morning sunshine and sucking in great lungfuls of air, the heart rate monitor going peep, peep, peep or in english "slow down, you're about to die!". Hennie had the narrowest tyres so he was battling the most and fell a little bit behind so carl and I waited halfway up a hill only for him to come cruising past us like he was on tar. Big lesson to learn here, when riding in soft sand let your tyres down to 1 bar and it is impossible to describe how much easier it makes the riding. Amazing! and even more amazing is that we, all three of us, should have known this because we have all looked at people in 4x4 struggling in the sand because they stupidly hadn't let their tyres down. At the top of the hill we climbed up to the trig beacon which had an awesome view over the valley.

After recovering from the ride we read, ate and slept before venturing out to the pool in the middle of the afternoon only to have to endure the sight of two teletubbies cavorting in the pool. Whatever happened to the svelte young damsels in bikini's - very disappointing. Some of the people really did look like they had swallowed a webber braai. Back home we went for the final braai

Packing up the house the next morning carl picked up a plastic bag and was just about to throw it away when something made him look inside only to find a mouse looking very dead. That was until one eye opened, didn't like what it saw and went straight back to playing dead. Very cute indeed.

So that was it; what a great weekend.

94.7km, the 2008 edition

The weekend for the annual Johannesburg festival of cycling has come and gone and what a great weekend it turned out to be. On saturday I rode in the 40km mountain bike race which I completed in 2:28 which was a bit slow so I'm not very happy with the time. I do however have some mitigating circumstances because the course was very muddy, in fact by the end one couldn't see a patch of skin on my legs they were so caked in mud.
I didn't see the altercation but I did see the explosion of one rather rotund cyclist that was being overtaken by pretty much everyone; apparently a faster cyclist told him to "keep his line" which is a pretty normal thing to do and all you have to do is just ride straight until the overtaking cyclist is gone but this moron took it as a personal affront and tried to kick the other cyclist off his bicycle while hurling expletives like a machine gun. The overtaking cyclist looked absolutely dumbfounded as to exactly what he had done to generate this amount of vitriol; methinks fatty hasn't been laid for far too long!
Not too long afterwards we had a herd of cows crossing the path so we spent a few minutes waiting for them to clear and finally I had a novice, not sure how he got ahead of me, stop and cut across my path through a particularly deep and large mud puddle; that was me, wallowing around in about 6" of mud. So, as races go, it was pretty eventful.
Sunday was the main road race which the leaders finished in 2:03 for 95km and although the course doesn't have real hills, it isn't exactly flat either. I don't know how they do it, the 13 leaders finished on the same second so it must have been a terrific bunch sprint at the end. I had a great race and I think I have finally started taking in food early enough that I don't run out of energy before the end. I finished in a time of 3:03 which means that I was 50% slower than the leaders; pretty humbling! Nonetheless I had a great race watching the various charity raisers like the herd of "cows" cycling to raise money for choc or the guys doing 95km on a hand powered bicycle. As a girl I was riding with at that time said as we went past shouting encouragement, "I can barely do the 95km using my legs, I can't imagine trying to do it with my arms!"
When I wasn't riding I spent most of my time eating and sleeping and in recovery mode.

The day of the dog

The sunday mountain bike rides are turning out to be quite eventful these days. Although there weren't any dead bodies blocking the path this week it was just as interesting. The day started at 04:45 and it is amazing how much having the first digit on the clock being a 4 makes it feel so much earlier than if it was a 5. Met up with Jason at his place and watched the sun rise over the horizon as we cycled down to meet Vaughn before heading over to Nothern Farm where we met Vaughns brother Scott and a couple of his mates.

While we were milling around waiting for scott to get his kit together there was this dog wandering around not taking too much notice of us but when we set off he followed us. After a kilometer it was clear that he was keen on a real run; keeping up with the bicycles quite easily, especially on the uphills. At the tops of hills he would wait for us, maybe have a lie down in a pool of water as if to say "... so what took you so long?" By the 15km mark jason was starting to work out how he could entice the dog to follow us all the way home. He was clearly very experienced with bicycles because when he was going downhill and he could hear you coming up behind him he would jump off the track and wait for you to pass before getting back on the track. By the 25km mark Jason was in awe and the dog was in danger of being muttnapped! I'm not sure exactly how far we rode with the dog loping alonside but it must have been quite close to 30km although you could see that he was getting at bit tired right at the end; one can easily understand being tired after a 30km run.

Jason's rear brakes have been binding a little which makes it very difficult to pedal; this I know from experience! While I enjoyed getting to the top of the hills ahead of everyone else, I think I may be in for a tough time when jason gets his brakes sorted out.

On our way home we were cycling next to each other about a metre apart and a snake crossed our path slithering in front of jason and behind me; clearly terrified and moving as fast as he/she or it possibly could. That would have been an experience getting a snake wrapped up in one's wheel.

Cathy and her sister Robyn, Vaughn's wife plus attendant children met us at northern farm for coffee so that the husbands could take the children for a bit of a ride. This seems to really work out well for everyone and if it wasn't for church I'm sure Carl and Kirsten would enjoy it was well.

Eish! More Statistics

This time of year in Johannesburg is just absolutely fantastic, cool crisp mornings and warm days. Last Sunday Jason and I did our first ride from my house out to Northern Farm for a long time which I thoroughly enjoyed in spite of some of the sights on the way.

We were barrelling along next to the river and just about to go under the N1 when we were forced to a skidding halt by a large green metal fence which has mysteriously appeared across our path. There was no way around it so we had to backtrack and try going down the other side which proved a little trickier than expected. Basically we had to walk along a 6" concrete strip with a 5m drop on the one side and very steep embankment on which we wheeled our bicycles on the other. To make it a little more difficult, there were pillars supporting the road overhead to get around as well. As we approached the other side we could see people milling around but it was only when we got quite close that we could see the wreckage of a car which had obviously come off the highway. What a mess, but it was only when we got really close that we realised that there was a dead body lying close to the vehicle. Worst of all, we had to jump/run down these giant steps and walk right past the body which was staring sightlessly into the sky.
We speculated that since the dead person was definitely not dressed in a manner one would expect the owner of the now totalled car to dress; that he was was a car thief who had either lost control or taken an off-ramp which wasn't and fell the 15m or so from the bridge. I was surprised at how little I felt looking at the body, I would have expected that the experience would have been more emotionally traumatizing but it wasn't.
We received a bit of a scolding from the site foreman about how dangerous it was for us to pick our way through his construction site to which we politely asked that he provide an alternative route for us to use. We also asked that someone at least put a blanket over the body. Back on the track and pounding the hills was great fun but it is quite amazing at how the paths have changed since we last rode this way.
We met Kathy and Kelly at the coffee house at Northern Farm after our ride and while Kathy and I chatted and drank coffee, Jason took Kelly for a ride which Kelly seemed to really enjoy which bodes well for the future.
Jason and I rode back to his place, our legs starting to get a little sore so it was great to be fetched by Caron rather than having to ride all the way home.

Themeda 2008 Continued

Something I forgot to mention about our ride yesterday; I really need to buy a handlebar mounting for the GPS, we missed a turn off and rode a steep kilometer long hill only to have to turn around and go all the way back to the bottom. Very frustrating but it was quite close to the start so we didn't take it as badly as we would have if we were at the latter stages of the ride.

While we were on the way home we were discussing whether Jason and I should or could ride down robbers pass and back up to Themeda while still giving everyone enough time to do whatever else needed to be done. Jason wasn't very sure but Cathy was egging him on, not so quietly either I have to add. So it was decided; we were going to ride down robbers pass and turn around and then ride all the way back up.

Sunday morning cracked and we had breakfast as we watched the ruby sun rise in the distance. The first 30minutes of the ride were exhilarating; that was the downhill section. The following 90 minutes was quite hard work. Below is the profile of the ride, not too much flat it has to be said!

I would definitely think twice before tackling this on a road bike even though it is considerably lighter and has no damping to soak up energy; the gearing on a mountain bike over-rides all other factors. I felt absolutely fantastic after the two hours of riding.
We parted company with Jason and Cathy who had to go and pick up Kelly from sun city while we "went to mecca" as Jason was fond of saying. Mecca being our unwanted, unloved piece of turf in white river.
Not much has changed in the estate, a couple more houses but looking at our forlorn bit, we really should get someone in to remove the trees, their stumps and flatten the ground, filling in the ditches and dongas. Very depressing seeing all the work that should be done on a piece of ground one doesn't actually want. Oh, well - there are worse things in life I guess.

On the way to white river we stopped in at the Africa Silk shop in graskop to buy some more mopane worm silk cushions. We bought some a couple of years ago and they have turned out to be great. While we were there Caron got into a bit of shopping frenzy and we left the shop proud owners of a new silk duvet. The outside is cotton but the actual filling is silk and this just has to be the most amazing duvet, it is very thin and light but amazingly warm. Strangely, each duvet has a serial number on it which they keep tabs on so they know exactly who actually has their duvets.

I finish with Carons' version of riding a bicycle.

Themida 2008

We were actually meant to be riding the Jock but I just didn't feel up to 150km of quite hard riding; it's not that we've exactly stopped riding, we're just taking it easy. Very easy!

Since Jason and Cathy had already palmed off their offspring it seemed like a free weekend was too good to waste so we met at Themida near Crystal Springs in Mpumulanga for what turned out to be an absolutely fantastic weekend; I wish they were all like this.

Traveling down to Themida on the friday evening we stopped in Dullstroom for supper at the something pickle which proved to be an inspired choice; roaring log fire, attentive camp waiter and very delicious food. I could have stayed right there for the weekend.

We arrived at about 20:30 having been driving for 4:30, grabbed the keys from Jan the proprietor and gingerly drove down increasingly poor tracks to the huts. We stayed in numbers 7 & 8 which are a little apart from the rest of the huts and the solitude is refreshingly delicious. There is no electricity so everything is run on gas which lends a particular feeling of isolation to the cottages. Jason and Cathy arrived at about 10:30 and I think they were very relieved to have actually found us because the final kilometer really starts to feel like one is totally lost.

Saturday morning we were up moderately early; it's very easy to sleep well at themida because there just isn't any noise at all at night and due to the design of the rondavels, they remain quite dark even at midday. Having learnt from my previous experience where a 3 hours estimated ride turned into an 8 hour epic, we were quite circumspect as to what distance we would do and had mapped out a 32km route with graeme last week. It was just as well, the 32km took us a full four hours to complete which was enough to really feel like one has been on a ride but not so much as to make it start to be an epic.

The ride is shown below in both topography view and profile and is definitely not for the novice mountain bike rider. The logging roads we were on most of the time hadn't been used in quite a while so they were quite difficult to ride on not to mention steep.



At one point you can just make out that we went backward and forth a couple of times trying to find the path that the GPS was leading us on. Blindly following the GPS was quite interesting and a little bit of an adventure because, as we found out last time, something that looks quite innocent on google earth can be quite an obstacle in real life. I could see the hesitation in Jason when we left a perfectly good mountain path to blunder down a very steep pine covered forest slope to emerge a few hundred metres on another, not quite so good, path.

Going down one of the trickier sections I ran the wrong line and a rock stopped my front wheel dead leaving me balancing on the front wheel with my back wheel trying to overtake my front wheel. I'm happy to say that I handled the situation with suitable aplomb and didn't bale like I did later. We didn't see a single person for almost the entire ride and it was only on the last climb that we happened upon a gang of tree pruners and it was right in front of them that I chose to fall off, much to their mirth. Two whities cycling in the middle of nowhere and one of them falls off. Much mirth!



Jason and I in some of the indigenous forest we cycled through, it was fabulous and quite a bit cooler and wetter than similarly positioned pine or gum forests.

Arriving back we spent the afternoon relaxing and sleeping. I woke up at about 16:00 while Caron continued to sleep and spent a very enjoyable 2 hours reading and watching a wild horse have a dust bath in the distance. I really could end every day like this!

We had decided to go down into pilgrims rest for supper expecting there to be numerous restaurants open but there was actually only the hotel which served a buffet for us to choose from. Not bad food but at the price, one felt that one needed to eat an awful lot of food so all the hard work done in the morning was for nothing. The Pilgrims street lights have to be the most eco-friendly in the world - not because pilgrims is particularly environmentally conscious but they are so pathetic that it is not possible for them to actually use any power. I tried an experiment and switched my headlights off and I can truthfully say that I was not able to see anything at all despite the presence of the street lamps.

While we were riding innocently along ...

Cycling has taken a bit of a back seat of late; I think I overdid it in the run-up to the Sani2C and I've been enjoying being a slacker but it's time to start turning the pedals again. We've never really stopped riding but it's the distance, frequency and intensity that have all gone down several notches.

We've been riding on the road and off the road on alternating weekends which has really been a great was of getting back into it. A couple of weeks ago we did a road ride; it was 4 deg. when we started and 3 hours later when we stopped it was 7 deg. and there was a nasty wind the whole way. I was so cold that I didn't actually warm up the whole day. Thankfully those kinds of rides are the exception rather than the rule.

The next weekend we rode off-road at Northern Farm which is owned by Johannesburg municipality and has something to do with the disposal of processed sewage. Not quite sure what they do with it but I think that they plough it into the fields and then grow crops and breed cows - the point I'm making is that it is a working farm and there's a fair amount of cow dung around. So there we were; barreling down a hill, Jason speaking ten to the dozen as he is wont to do when mid-sentence there is an explosion of hacking, coughing and spluttering from him. A clod of cow-dung had flicked up and landed right at the back of his throat where you put pills so that you can't hack them up. As the coughing and spluttering continued I remarked that he should be thankful that it was only cow-dung at which point he started to look distinctly ill and declare that injections to prevent typhoid, dipthoid and any other kind of oid was going to happen as soon as he got home. Of course I was laughing so much at his antics that I could barely stay on my own bike.

It's now two weeks later and he is still alive and well so I think it was just cow-dung after all!

Back in the Saddle

Although Jason and I haven't actually stopped riding, the frequency and intensity have gone down to about a 1 out of 10 which has been quite pleasant but the time has come, as they say, to pick it up again. Sunday we did a 70km route which was great albeit exhausting. When we started the ride it was 4.5 deg C but I thought it would warm up quite quickly so I was riding in shorts, my concession to the cold being a windbreaker and some newspaper and long fingered gloves. When we finished the ride three hours later it was 7 deg C which is not a whole lot warmer and I spent the entire day chilled but not quite frozen. It was great being on the bike again in the winter sunshine riding past the lionesses and their cubs and helping some other cyclists who didn't have multi-tools to fix their own bikes.

It was shortly afterwards that I was following one of the previously broken cyclists around a corner and as I was thinking that this was too fast around the corner, his front wheel slipped and he went tip over arse over kettle with me braking hard to avoid riding into him. No damage other than some nasty road rash and some bruising that'll remind him not to take corners that fast for a week or two.

We finished the ride at cycle lab and I was very thankful that I didn't have to ride the extra 10km home. I'm sure my legs will get back into the swing of things quite quickly but at the moment - it's quite exhausting.

We had a very rare family gathering at lunch time at Kirstens place; very rare that all the siblings are in the same town at the same time. Had a very enjoyable lunch with lots of wine before we all settled in to watch some of the tour de france. Carl has obviously become an addict judging from the depression that set in when Kirsten insisted on switching over to watch Wimbledon. Personally, I think she just wanted to watch Rafael Nadal show his biceps off.

The Pain has gone

After a week recuperating, I am finally able to sit on a chair in a more or less normal position again to recount my experiences of the "Subaru Sani2C 2008" as the entertainment hosts never failed to mention to us. They (the hosts) were amazing and managed to slip it into the dialog even when it detracted from the dialog. Sort of, Oh! there's a silence, we'd better fill it with something - and "Subaru Sani2C" would bellow over the speakers.

What have I learned from this :
1. I think that bicycle toolkits should come with an extra thingamyjig which could loosely be termed the "Saddle Extractor".
2. 5-6 weeks of intense training is simply not enough to ensure a pain free Sani2C. Morphine and myprodol are far more effective.
3. Choice of partner is very important and I got really lucky having Sid as a partner.
4. The more pain an event generates, the greater the sense of achievement one gets from finishing it.

Sani2C Day 1

It's only a week ago and the memories are already fading, it could of course be something to do with the excessive amount of pain which I managed to subject my body to.

We, Sid and I, drove down to Underberg on Wednesday afternoon which took a mere 6 1/2 hours which was much more reasonable than the 8 that we had been told that it would take. We found the house that BY and Kim had hired only to find that we were unexpected guests, something went very wrong with the communications between Jason and Kim or BY. Fortunately the couches in the lounge had not yet been taken so we were able to commandeer those and actually had a very reasonable nights kip.

The next morning we dropped the car off and hoped that we would see it again intact in Scottburgh on Saturday. The start line was pretty close and we joined the bunch of excited people about 10minutes before we were off. Saw Jason wandering around trying to find Rob, his partner for the race - and only the race just to be clear. A few minutes late we saw Jason still looking for Rob but now he had lost his bike as well so it was looking like it was going to be a very long race for him.

The gun went and we were off and despite an agreement not to start off too fast, we did. More accurately it should be said that it was too fast for me, Sid was merely cruising and in fact pretty much cruised the entire race. After about 20km of dirt road we entered the first of the single track which was something of a novel experience for me. After about a kilometre of single track I managed to fall off for the first and not the only time although it was the only time that I was actually moving forward. What happened was that I pulled off the track to overtake the rider in front and there was a 2" log lying parallel to my path which is a sure fire way to fall and it was in avoiding this that I fell anyway. No harm done and I was soon back in the saddle.

About 1/3 of the way through the day we rode over the "Steel and Pipe" bridge which was a totally unique experience. It is a floating bridge about 1.5m wide on pontoons and as you ride, it sinks below the water and it is just such a wierd experience. Very enjoyable though! Although 1.5m sounds really wide to ride on, it is only wide as long as one is moving reasonably fast but at the end of the bridge is a short slippery climb so everyone slows down and by the time you get to the end you are virtually stationary balancing on this bobbing bridge. Not so easy! Thought I was going to disgrace myself and ride off the edge a couple of times.

Photo courtesy of Rob Mcloughlin

I don't remember much after this other than a split in some single track, one marked "Easy" and the other "Very Hard" so I naturally took the easy one. The next hill that I remember is called "Tiny's Hill" for some odd reason and it is the last hill before the finish. If one hadn't done the 80km before it, it would probably be quite easy but after 80km of mountain biking I have to confess that I struggled up it in 1st gear.

Photo courtesy of the Sani2c website

After washing the bikes, locating our boxes and finding our tents it was time for a shower and food. The organisation on the Sani2C is just exceptional and the amount of food available at anytime of the day or night is astounding. Of course, after 83km of riding, it takes a lot of eating to put all that energy back so the trend was set for the next couple of days. First we ride, then we eat and sleep all afternoon before supper at 18:00 and then there is more sleep from 20:30 until the start of the next day at about 05:00.

I was just checking my brake pads in preparation for the next day and I happened to brush the worm patch in the sidewall of my front tire which dislodged it entirely and I ended up removing the tire and putting a patch on the inside. What a lucky break, this could so easily have come out tomorrow at any one of a number of dangerous spots.

The marquee that dinner and the entertainment was held in seated about 1500 people which means that it was pretty huge but by 20:30 I was the only rider in it and the tents were absolutely quiet in the tents. I would never have believed it if someone had told me but there was not a single rowdy group of guys keeping everyone else awake.

Day 1 summary : 83km, 1100m ascent, 88% of max heart rate average. 3500kcal consumed. 4:28 elapsed time.

Sani2C Day 2

The big one. This is the day that everyone has been telling me about how difficult it is and it is very safe to say that I had not been misled. A mother of a day!

The start was very early at 04:00 so that by 06:00 we were racing. The first 20km was great undulating terrain which my legs could cope with, it was the next 80km that almost killed me. After the first 20km we popped out of the forests to be greeted with the most magnificent view down the umkomaas valley with the cloud lying about 500m below us.

Photo courtesy Rob Mcloghlin

Quite a special sight, as was the first of the steep drops which had my tyres fighting for traction as I did an awesome two wheel drift down some of the sections. Very tricky going, too much braking just leads to skidding and too little leads to hair raising speed over very rough ground. Very fine balance to be had. The drop down nicks pass just has to be experienced - literally dozens of hairpin single track bends like in the photograph below. Absolutely breathtaking.

Photo courtesy of San2C website

At the bottom of nicks pass as someone so poetically put it - "Oh well, so much for the fun part of the day, now we pay!" I had been warned about the climb up to the half way point as being particularly difficult which it was but for some reason I felt that I coped ok with it. I was very glad to have an enforced 10minute rest at the half way stop which I took full advantage off while sid impatiently tapped his feet eager to be off and attack the rest of the course. The organisers put this enforced stop in due to the number of heat stroke victims which they had last year because of the temperatures that the umkomaas valley gets to. We were lucky that it was relatively cool the entire race but it was in relative terms only, we were still racing in low to mid 30 deg C heat.

What nobody warned me about was the 20km climb after the halfway stop. Mother! what a climb it just went on and on and on. There were the odd downhills but they were just followed by even bigger uphills. At one point I called an unscheduled stop ostensibly to put some oil on my chain but in reality I just needed a couple of minutes to collect my wits and gather what little strength remained for the last of the climb. Coming over the top there was pretty close to 20km of downhill, a few uphills but nothing serious. With about 14km to go there was the final waterstop where there was a cycle through bike and rider wash, what a fantastic feeling - cold water everywhere. Forced down the last of my energy gels which is becoming something of an art to swallow because they just taste awful and your stomach just wants to regurgitate it back up. The method is that you swallow as quickly as possible and then throttle yourself until the anti-peristalis movements die down. Then you breathe for a couple of minutes to get the ugly blue complexion out of your face so that people will stop asking if you are all right.

The finish line and the campsite below was a great relief to see and I was happy to have survived.

Photo courtesy of Sani2C website

We washed our bikes, found our bins and tents and had something to eat before passing out. Later on I had a great massage from one of the 50 or so masseurs laid on by the organisers. Had supper and swapped war stories before turning in exhausted. I sat looking at two potatos on my plate for about 30 minutes before I gave up - the thought of another potato was just too much.

When we arrived at the tents there was a small packet of droe wors and I just couldn't resist a couple of bites. It definitely tastes as good as I remember it to taste - in fact I can still taste it.

Day 2 summary: 99km, 2200m ascent, 80% of maximum average heart rate, 4500kcal and 6:40 elapsed time.

Sani2C Day 3 and beyond

Day 3 was supposed to be the easy day. It was easy but ONLY in comparison to day 2 - compared to anything else it is still quite a tough, albeit short day.

The day is fast and furious with an abundance of fast downhill and single track which was awesome, of course we had to pay for all of this with some really nasty climbs as shown below but there were some fantastic moments flying through the cane fields of KZN with magnificent view on both the left and right of the path.

Photo courtesy of Rob Mcloughlin

Yes, that is jason in the photograph PUSHING his bicycle up the hill. So it isn't just us back markers that pushed them up! Sid had a near accident experience around one of the corners behind me, his brakes just couldn't slow him down enough so he went off the road into the bushes and emerged back out bouncing all over the place with both legs around his hears. That has gotta hurt!

Just after this we hit the final tough climb, or so they said, called "heartbreak" hill but I think it should be renamed to "heart attack" hill because it feels like your heart is going to jump out your chest by the time you get to the top. From the top of this there was a quick water stop before a long downhill to the beach.

Rob and Jason. Photo courtesy of Rob Mcloughlin

We finally emerged onto the beach by Scottburgh for the 500m along the beach of which I think I did about 150m before deciding that it is a bad idea riding in beach sand and pushed my bike the rest of the way. The final hill of the race was the one up to the finish at Scottburgh High School which was just plain mean and nasty of the organisers. Sid helped by pushing me like he had on numerous hills but no matter how much someone pushes, you still have to pedal it yourself.

Photo courtesy of Sani2C website

Finished! I had made it intact, a little sorry for myself but basically in good spirits.

After the finish we found some accommodation in Umkomaas and hung around until the prize giving that evening, mostly because there was a chance someone would win a Subaru Emprezza which would be a pretty awesome finale to the event. Alas it was not to be, for us that is!

After the prize giving we tried to find a restaurant but everything closes on the south coast at 21:30 so there was this mad race around scottburgh and umkomaas until we found the one and only restaurant in scottburgh that stays open late. It was just in time for rob, he was starting to gnaw on his fingers he was so hungry.

Day 3 summary : 71km, 1200m ascent, 80% maximum heart rate average, 3500kcal, 3:46 elapsed time.

Trainings over ... at last!

This morning was my last ride of any distance and even then it was done at what felt like a fairly relaxed pace. It was great to go up hills at less than 90% max heart rate. Even though we were taking it easy we still averaged 25km per hour on the route which means that I am considerably fitter than I was just a short 6 weeks ago. It feels like much longer ago that we started the intensive training but it isn't and it's hard to believe that 6 weeks ago we were still skiing in Avoriaz and all the training was ahead of me. Talking to some guys that we met this morning who are training for the cape epic, they're tired of the training now and can't wait for the next few weeks to pass and then it's their turn to relax and slow down.

Spent Saturday morning buzzing from shop to shop buying odds 'n sods. I'm sure that I'm taking too much with me so I might have to re-evaluate when I do the final packing into the box provided by the organisers. I'm starting to really look forward to the actual race and the challenge of getting through day 2 which looks like a monster of a day.

Yet more training

I met sid who is going to be my partner for the Sani2Sea. Everytime I mention his name I can't help thinking of "Sid the Sloth" from Ice Age but sid is anything but sloth like. Methinks I might be in deep sh!t. We did an 85km mountain bike ride yesterday which involved climbing over two mountain ranges and then all the way back and by the time we got to the last major climb of the day, my legs felt like lead. It was a long slow and seemingly never ending climb and by the time we got to the top I could barely walk. Everyone else was in the same state as me bar sid and brian who cycled back down to encourage and push the other riders up. Their reasoning, or so they said, was that they didn't want their legs to get cold. I was looking forward to an easy downhill and then gently undulating terrain until the finish but I hadn't factored into the equation that sid and jason would put the hammer down leaving the rest of us gasping for breath. I think that this is the last really hard ride I will be doing so I can look forward to 3/4 strength workouts this week and a single 60 or 70km relaxed ride next weekend. I won't know what to do with all the time I'm going to have on my hands.