JohanDiv

Just spent our first night in our new home on Diemersfontein. Did a very quick spin around the house after work to see where it's possible to ride on the farm/estate... 14km with 350m elevation gain. Think I might actually be in with a shot of hitting my 130 000m elevation target this year!

Ja okay, let's do this again! Just got back from 6 weeks holiday, up 7kg!! I'm pretty sure at least 3kg of that is just a food baby, but my work pants are feeling a bit tight this morning! After DC in November I was on 82,8kg. Now I'm on 90kg. Goal for the year is 75,1kg. If I hit that, I'll be 50kg down from the 125,1kg I started on in 2017.

Last few days of Vleesbaai holiday spinning..

Where are you guys staying? I'm thinking of doing a +-110km gravel loop from Vleesbaai to Herbertsdale and back later this week.

Gravel grinding somewhere in the Northern Cape..

Events limited to 250 people outdoors.. I guess that's that then..... see you guys at TB 2022. Obviously didn't commit to a Aug 2021 entry yet, and probably sold out now? [emoji2357]

I did exactly that calcs last week based on 16hrs of riding to get back to PE in time. Last year just under 100 teams finished over 16 hours.(+- 300 riders) They will have to make the cut-off points even earlier to get all the riders back to the finish line before say 21:00, taking into account that some people still need to drive to PE before 22:00 (Not sure if an hour is enough for that). Large sweeping trucks picking up 300+ riders WILL NEVER WORK! There goes the social distancing for one. And smaller bakkies picking up 300+ rider will be absolute chaos. Based on this, I think the Jan TB will not go ahead in the end.

I hate riding with backpacks.. but I'm planning a few long MTB rides this holiday where it's not possible to refuel along the way. This seems like the best minimalistic option there is. Bought straight from Uswe overseas because there's nowhere stock in South Africa. Price R1069,23 plus R645,75 import duties & taxes = R1714,98, and took less than 10 days to get here. Bargain!

If they can't organize special permits for us, I can't see the event going on with the new curfew in place. If you have to be home by 22:00, you have to finish by around 21:00. If you take the early start at 05:00, that gives you 16 hours to complete the race.. based on last year's results, that's almost a hundred teams not completing the race in time.

Lol, they were taken within 10mins of posting

Three sets of tyres that need to go by tomorrow night or they go to the bin. Pick up in Paarl. 1. Ardent 2.4 front tyre skinwall and Ikon 2.2 skinwall rear tyre. The Ikon has about 20% tread left, the Ardent 40%. 2. Ikons 2.1, the one has about 10% tread left, the other 20% 3. Kenda Slant Six. Brand new.

Congrats with your win Dewald!! I had instant regret not starting with the first batch.. got held up all the way to Waterpoint 1, and back down I caught the 20km traffic.(Not that I would've come close to your time anyways!)

Just picked up a few R399 jerseys and a puffer jacket for R599 on the Ciovita website.

My feeling is that at the moment they spend too much time developing the game to cater for the pro riders instead of listening to us, the paid user, and fixing the small irritating bugs that has been with us for years. Like how difficult can it be to get the game to exit a ride to the main screen so you can start a new ride, instead of exiting all the way out.

Temps aren't looking too bad for The Race weekend, sub 30 degrees, but a strong headwind predicted

I'm also looking forward to seeing the Kloof in daylight! Last year was my first and we were hampered by early mechanicals, and one of our guys bonked on the first fang already. The rest of the team sat on top of the second fang watching the sunset while waiting for him to push his bike up.. It was a looooooong night from there!

Nah not necessary at all I think. Last year it was just nice to see your family at a checkpoint in the cold and darkness waiting you in with a hot chocolate, pancake and slap chips.. and for one of the guys in our team that was all that kept him going to the next checkpoint. For January I'm sending a few extra frozen powerbar bidons with my wife to Checkpoint #5 and #7. Last year all the water table powerbar was done by the time we got to Checkpoint #4. Only slightly luke warm water was left. Luckily I had extra bidons in my Checkpoint crates, but in January your crate will basically act as a microwave I think, so not really a nice option to put extra bidons in the crates this time.

Ah yes, and at CP #7 also mandatory. Our wives wants to be part of that whole experience and not just at the finish line, so that's luckily not a problem for us.

Like they say, a spectator is not a supporter. No spectators allowed, but (paid) supporters are allowed at Hadleigh and the finish line. We are a team of 4, and we paid for 4 supporters when we entered in December. All our wives will be going to Hadleigh Pakstoor and the finish as supporters, not as spectators. Unless I somewhere missed that they changed that and only one driver in a support vehicle is now allowed? Then we need to be refunded for the three other supporter entries.. but I doubt that is the case.

Guys that have made custom kit with Vye before... how long do you usually wait to get a first design proposal from them from the date you made payment? And then how long does it take to actually get the kit when you approve a design? I know it has been DC kit madness and everything the last couple of weeks, but we've not received any ideas or designs from them in 6 weeks from payment for our Trans Baviaans kit.. Most companies closes shop in 3-4 weeks, then only back for 1 week in January, then it's Trans Baviaans. I'm starting to get a bit worried that the kit is not going to be ready in time.

Haha let's first see if the gogga bites! Price bracket of 7000 ronds at the moment, not 7000 euros!

Built by a french company called Cyfac Bicycles. Framesets start at 7000 euros. I'm actually just starting now to do a bit of research to buy a tandem and came across this beaut by accident!

Nice bike.. but I'll wait until after the Olympics for the "Super Duper Modern" version.

That's like 4kg lighter than my Spark!