Jaco Steyn

I received a SMS today from Cycle Lab Supercycling Club informing me that from now on we need to collect our Ride Magazine (part of the club benefits/membership fees) at the club offices. I am 100km away from the club, so it will be daft to ride to Fourways just to collect a ?R35 magazine! If I do not take the magazine, will I get a discount of my club membership fees? I think this just sucks.

It is quite a coincedence that you are asking this question today, because my legs have felt dead tired today! I did a fairly hard (well, for me in any case) 75 km training ride yesterday morning and today I have no energy, and my legs feel really very tired. I have never actually beleived in taking suplements before or after training/racing and just the od Powerade/Energade is all that I take. Maybe I should rethink this, or maybe it just is my age (47 in three weeks) begining to catch up on me. I really had difficulty in cycling to work this morning because my legs felt really weak. It was exactly the same scenario after last weekend Fast One race. Only after about 3 days my legs feel strong enough to go out on my morning rides. steynja2010-02-01 12:34:33

Try these guys: http://www.paragontech.co.za/

The one thing that I pride myself on is that I make a point to thank ALL the marshals (male, female, young, old, black, white etc.) along the route for their efforts. It could not have been fun to be standing out there in the rain and wind with yesterday's race. Luckily I am only a fun rider (03:10 for yesterday's race), so I do not have to concentrate too much on the technical aspects of the race, and can therefore focus on appreciating the environment and thanking the marshals for their efforts.

I think that I will be joining you!

That would be cool! I am in Sasolburg.

Where can I get new helmet pads/liners for my Giro Transfer helmet? This helmet is roughly 5 years old and I have never crashed it, so no need to replace. (2 kids at university, money is scarce!) I tried a few cycle shops arround the Pretoria area today when I went there for bussiness, but none of them could help me. The main problem seems to be that my helmet is quite "old", and is not produced anymore. Any suggestions?

Benzine is a mixture of straight chain hydrocarbons (alkanes) from a C5 to probably a C9. The general formula will therefore be CnH2n + 2, therfore a C5 (Pentane) wil be C5H12, C6 (Hexane) C6H14 etc. Carbon Tet, otherwise known as Carbon Tetracloride (CCl4).

Johan, that will be the "good" stuff. It is actually quite difficult to get hold of pure or even technical grade Benzene (C6H6). I work at Sasol in a laboratory, and we need to get special permission to keep Benzene in our lab. Actually, currently we need quite a large volume of +98% pure benzene for one of our projects, and it is easier (lot less hassle and paperwork) for us to obtain a Benzene rich (?50%) stream from Sasol in Secunda and distill it to our required purity. Getting hold of large quantities of pure potable Ethanol is even worse!steynja2010-01-16 07:33:49

Johan, You must just take care not to confuse Benzine with Benzene. As taken from Wikipedia: "Benzine should not be confused with benzene. Benzine is a mixture of alkanes, e.g., pentane, hexane, and heptane, whereas benzene is a cyclic, aromatic hydrocarbon, C6H6. Likewise, petroleum ether should not be confused with the class of organic compounds called ethers, which contain the R-O-R functional group." More info: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Petroleum_ether

Unfortunately I am a gadget junkie, and a normal cycle computer will just not do! But I do agree with Slowbee, a plain cycle computer in most cases will do the job just as good. For my level of cycling the most basic one that can offer cadence will be all that I need. Being a gadget freak unfortunately can be quite hard on my wallet. We are 4 people in our household, and each of us has a GPS capable cellphone. I have an Edge 705, a Garmin Nuvi, a Garmin GPS12, a Route 66 GPS and a Altech Netstar Guardian. That is a total of 9 GPS receivers in our house!

Here is my home-made device for keeping the traffic police at bay! It attaches to the bike rack with bungi cords.

How did you manage that? I have tried crying, asking, begging, questioning, negotiating, blogging, started a hub tread, tried Garmin U.S, kicked & screamed a bit, pleaded, cried some more and up to now nothing has worked. Avnic is not budging and all I keep getting is a new (broken) 305. I have started the negotiations with Avnic when I started this thread in Oct, and still havent gotten anywhere. (more about that next year, they closed now) They including Garmin U.S just doesnt seem to care much about the little guy (like us complaining here) creating a bit of bad publicity. They sell more of these broken units than they care to tell us about and they do so without feeling guilty about it either. I have also confirmed this previously on this thread (page 7, 27 November 2009) that this is true. Right next to my keyboard is the invoice for a total of R2508.00 which I paid for an "Out of Warranty Replacement" for my Edge 305 which I sent in. I did an EFT into their account, and 2 days later a whole new Edge 705 bundle (Cadence + Heart rate monitor included) was delivered via courier right to my doorstep.

Notes: IMPORTANT: IF UPGRADING FROM A SOFTWARE VERSION LESS THAN 2.80 ALL USER DATA WILL BE CLEARED. Change History Changes made from version 2.90 to 3.10: Added ability to use waypoint elevation as the starting elevation for an activity when the user starts within approximately 30m of this waypoint. Fixed issue where workouts using power zones based on percent of FTP or heart rate zones based on percent of maximum HR were saved incorrectly. Fixed issue where Garmin Training Center could give a data transfer failed error if the unit had a bike profile name longer than fifteen characters. Fixed issue with inaccurate display of history dates in some languages. Added support for updated Australia Daylight Saving Time start and end dates. Updated translations.Link here

For those with fitness devices such as the Edge, an updated version of the Training Center has been released. Change Log: Changes made from version 3.4.5 to 3.5.1: Added support for Garmin Edge 500 cycling computer. Added the ability to display power data when present in user activities. Added the capability to import gpx files as activities and export activities and courses as gpx files. Fixed issue where a user would be repeatedly required to choose between the application and device user profile during user data transfers to certain devices. This could occur in situations where the resting heart rate was set in the application's profile. Fixed issue where transition information would be removed from a Multisport activity if the activity was dragged and dropped into a different folder. Updated map drawing code. Deprecated support for Forerunner Logbook files. Improved application auto-update feature. Fixed issue where application could have a fatal exception in certain situations during program exit. Fixed issue where importing certain tcx files could cause the application to crash. Fixed issue where application could fail in certain situations when reading in workouts with steps with power targets. Download link: http://www.garmin.com/software/TrainingCenter_351.exe

Thanks, will do so. He is however only going next year April.

Beautifull pics! I will point a friend of mine in this direction. The lucky bugger won an all-expenses-paid trip to Zanzibar last week on "Reise en Soetkyse" on Kyknet.

I think that comment was totally uncalled for! I just gave my personall experience and never made a personal attack.

I saw them when they came in. His son was proudly showing everybody that they passed his medal. That sort of gave me a lump in my throat. steynja2009-11-16 14:13:04

I did my first 94.7 in 2002 as a bet. My brother-in-law said that I will not be able to complete a cycle race of "such magnitude" as he said at the time. I entered the day the entries closed. I was 40 years old, and has never done a cycle race in my life! And with just over a month to train. The next day I went out and got myself a Raleigh RC 2000 and completed it in 03:57. Thereafter I did 5 in a row, but was set back for two times. 2007 was out because of my knee operation (best thing I did to make my cycling experience better!) and 3 weeks before last years event I had an eye operation. So this year will be my 6th 94.7 race, but I stopped counting at 100 as to how many other races I have done since I started cycling. I will never be a good cyclist, but I will always be a cyclist! steynja2009-11-10 13:49:19

MuXmAn, Yuo can also add relief for cracked heels to your list. I have used your cream on my heels for only two days, and the are almost completely healed. Another day or so and they should be completely healed.

Also have a look over here: http://cgi.ebay.ph/Vintage-Le-Taureau-Singlespeed-bike-Modolo-Dura-Ace_W0QQitemZ200376457959QQcmdZViewItemQQptZSport_Radsport_Fahrr%C3%A4der?hash=item2ea75e1ae7&_trksid=p3286.c0.m14 Wait for the page to fully load, and then scroll down for some really nice close-up pics.