JohanDiv

I see the combined leaderboard also isn't quite up to date. Still shows me at 16 000m while I'm over 29 000m at the moment.

Sub 90 for the first time in 13 years. Total weight loss 35.2kg.

You already lost 32x 500g Rama Margarine bakkies! Well done! Next time when you are in Pick n Pay stack 32 of them together and see how much that actually is! That will surely keep the motivation up to drop even more.. I have a friend that decided to start cycling at the start of the year after seeing what difference it made for me, and now all of a sudden he eats pies for breakfast! He tells me he can now eat whatever he wants because he is exercising now, but he still can't understand why he's not losing any weight haha. It's definitely somewhere in the range of 70% diet and 30% exercise if you want to lose weight. Don't worry about the guys commenting when they cycle past you, those are the average chops you'll ride circles around if you keep on cycling for a year or two. Talking out of personal experience here..

Well done!! Yes, tracking calories is the only thing that works for me. Not just tracking what you eat, but also how much. Portion control and snacking between meals was my downfall. When you start counting is when you only realize how much you are actually consuming! Agree, sustainable healthy eating habit is the way to go. No crash diet will work, you'll loose interest and gain everything back again. And just leave the take aways, junk food and sodas completely. Like we all agreed yesterday, you can have delicious sustainable meals from healthy foods all the time. I just really have to focus to get my "cheat days" down to one per week again and not 3-4 days a week like the last two months. By "cheat days" I mean meals that contain pasta, cheese, bread, rice, or potatoes. Ate those foods with my meals too much these last two months so my weight just kept constant, fluctuating 1kg around 91kg. Only one day a week eating those foods, the rest of the week only foods from Item 1. that Ed-Zulu posted yesterday and I'll start dropping weight again. Basically eggs, chicken, fish or red meat with a million different options of salads and veggies. You can't get bored of that!

It wasn't a conscious decision, but I completely stopped using my Camelbak about a year ago. My back started to pain on 80km+ rides with the camelbak.. tried a few rides without it and rather just put everything in my jersey pockets..and I kinda forgot I had a Camelbak until now. I used to ride with two water bottles and camelbak. I was still unfit back then and definitely over hydrated while riding. Now two bottles are enough for a 80km ride..anything further than that I'd most likely pass a shop or padstal to refill the bottles.

To be clear.. by cheat day I don't mean fast food or take aways. A cheat day for me means I can have aartappels, braaibroodjies and garlic bread with my braaivleis, or a pasta meal. Rest of the week is lean meats, eggs, veggies and salads for me. One cheat day a week is what works for me. I have lost 35kg like that and kept it off. Going out with mates and controlling myself not really the issue, but three bachelor weekends and three wedding weekends the past two months made it pretty much impossible to keep it straight.

No amount of secret training is going to help you lose weight if your diet is as sh*tty as mine was this last two months!! Jeez I've been hitting my weekly goals of 10km running, 130km cycling, 2500m vertical gain constantly and I'm still not breaking that 90kg barrier! It's getting frustrating to say the least, but I just can't seem to find the discipline to just eat right 6 days of the week and cheat 1 day. Cheat days are now almost 3-4 days a week and way too much drinking beer the last two months. At least I managed to keep the weight more or less constant within a kg or two over this period. April will be about more discipline and planning when it comes to what I eat to get me back on track.

Shhhht..we busy eating

I also have the Syncros Matchbox Tailor HV1.5 Bottle Cage with the pump, multi tool and chain breaker. There's no need to strap chain quick links to your frame or brake cables, there is actually a place made for two of them inside the toolbox where they fit nicely. On the back I have a bottle cage mounted on my seatpost with two CO2 bombs. When just out on training rides I put the bomb adapter, plugs, plug tool and mini squirt lube in my back pocket. For a race I mount that stuff, minus the lube, with a spare tube on my seatpost underneath the bottle cage.. Obviously I'm not running a dropper post with this setup.

Can't seem to find any info on how to enter this event?

6min19sec gap at last waterpoint

Scott and Pyga working together on the front. Glad it looks like Phil is feeling a bit better. Matthys deserves a good day for a change!

Scott now 3min in the lead!

I'm gonna assume the live tracking isn't so live? It shows Scott already having a 5.2km lead over Cannondale. I know Fumic had a washout early in the stage and Scott's lead on the stage grew to around 1min15sec, but they pulled it back to around 1min what I last heard.

Pro UCI Men go first..in reverse GC order. Then the Pro UCI ladies in reverse GC order. Then the rest in GC order(fastest to slowest).

Allan giving a nice shoutout to coach John Wakefield! Interviewer commenting on how they look fresher after every day.

And gone..Fumes blown out the back...

That might come back to bite them at the end of the stage..cutting those S-bends you definitely score around 30 secs.

And then Nino pedals past him and pops a manual down the Land Rover technical terrain hahaha

New seeding index improved by almost 12 points after this race

So the wedding long weekend is finally over.. Time to assess the damages after a day of "normalizing" again. 93.5kg!!!!! Jeez what have I done... up 2.6kg since the beginning of March!! Will have to work hard and keep focus to just get back to 90.9kg before the end of the month!

Perfect training at the right time before the Karoo2Coast I would say! Relatively new to longer distances this is exactly what I did last year. Entered for the 60miler(100km). Had proper fun! It's rolling hills all the way, no long climbs like the K2C, but also not a lack of climbing. Even if you do it just for the vibe and the breakfast roosterkoek in the 45min neutral zone at the ferry it's well worth it! I ended up doing Around the Pot in 5 hours, and Karoo2Coast in 5 hours 30min a few months later. Just remember, it's rolling hills DOWN to the ferry at 48km, and rolling hills UP back to town. The second halve of the race is definitely more climbing..on a stomache full of roosterkoek..on legs that got cold in the 45min neutral zone. Just keep that in mind. I went full-out on that first 48km down to the ferry at an average of almost 25kmh, and then around 70km I really started to struggle because I didn't keep any reserves in the tank. Ended with an average of 20kmh, so the second halve was real slow going for me. They had a grader on that road just before the race, so smooth gravel roads all the way(except the last few km)..easier terrain than Karoo2Coast. I was on the verge of entering for the full 100miler this year, but my wife is trying to get back into cycling again, so we entered as a mixed team for Around the Pot 60miler. She's a runner so the general fitness is there, but the cycling training is not up to speed yet..we'll probably just aim for 7 hours, enjoy the atmosphere and stop at all the waterpoints.

I also had crossmarks front and back 2.1. Never gave me issues. Now I have the 2.25 Ikon on the back, 2.4 Ardent up front. Ikon has low rolling resistance for the flats and climbing, and the Ardent grips up front when descending almost any terrain. I've just replaced my back Ikon after 4500 trouble free kilometers with another Ikon. Could've pushed it maybe for another 500km. The front Ardent still looks new after 5000km. I won't go back to Crossmarks again, happy with the combo I've been riding these last two years.

I'm struggling to get back on the STRICT DAILY CALORIE COUNTING wagon since the end of January!! February was basically a break even, but if it carries on like this I'm going in the wrong direction this month! Already leaving for the West Coast tomorrow for my sisters wedding weekend that's going to be a non-stop party.. It was last year also more or less this time of the year when I started going backwards and found myself 5kg up by the end of September. I can't let that happen again this year! At least my fitness is good at the moment. Don't think I've ever been this fit in my life before. Smashed the CTCT MTB Challenge 60km this past weekend in 45min quicker than I hoped for, got up the next day feeling good enough to pedal up the mountain again.