ChristoKruger

Some great advice, like he said listen to your body. I cant stress this enough, when you start feeling pain in your knees, you really need to rest until the pain goes away. I overdid it when I started by running 17 days straight without taking rest days in between. My knees started hurting badly, I then walked for two weeks until they were healed. I also combine running and cycling, running 5k on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays and cycling in between. I rest on Sunday. I've been at it for two months now and my pace has increased from 7:30/km to 6:00/km. Aiming for 5:00/km I also went to Runaway sport to get properly fitted and it made a world of difference, no knee pain anymore

Thanks for all the great advice guys, got myself a very well looked after 2015 Merida Ninety-Nine 9.600 kitted with SLX & XT and with a tubeless conversion today.

Thanks for the welcome & great advice! I really would rather go the secondhand route as you get more bang for your buck, so is this the secondhand bikes I should look at? Scott SparkSpecialized EpicGiant AnthemMerida 96/99Trek Fuel

I'm looking at purchasing a dual suspension 29er. I'm 42 and coming off a Scott Aspect 620 26" hardtail. I currently do 30km of gravel roads every second day and I would like to graduallly incease that to 60km. My limited understanding is that the general rule is that an XC bike has 100m or less suspension travel and a trail bike has 120mm or more? I'm looking at a comfortable bike to do the kms, thus I'm not sure how much suspension travel I would need, I'm 177cm and 82kg. I mostly ride on flat gravel with minor corrugations but I would also like to compete in MTB events for fun. My budget for a secondhand bike is R20k. Would love some advice on what to buy.