swartpiet

http://www.alloutmtb.co.za/content/swadini-top-mariepskop

Thanks Mads, I hope a few other crazy cyclists will be joining me on 30 July to see if we can ride this monster twice or maybe three times in 8 hours. Im already starting the mental battle.

Here are two pics and the altitude profile.

Howzit hubber, On saturday afternoon at 14:30, I made it to the top of Mariepskop. I will tell all in my review. For now all I will say is that it is by far the tuffest challenge Ive done on my bicycle to date. I started at swadini. The total ride was 60.5km. According to my polar from 48 to 58km, I climbed 1030m. Can I add that it was non-stop climbing, no relief, no slightly easier gradient inbetween, nothing. It is insane. The max gradient was 18degree. My total climbing for the ride was 1725m. And to add to the pain, my wife was so excited about the whole thing that she forgot my additional nutrition at swadini. I did the whole ride on one camelback with 2 servings of 32GI. This was finished 3km before I reached the top. I will tell the whole experience in my review together with all the pics and the video.

Totally agree with the other guys here. The 220 method has never been proved to be accurate and never will be. There is just to many factors. And even for one person your Max HR will differ depending on your fitness levels as well. As you get fitter and your cardio vascular system gets stronger and more efficient your Max HR may come down. Your heart is a muscle and therefor has the ability to grow stronger and even increase in size/volume. Therefor with the correct long term exercise you can increase the strength of your heart and the volume it can put through with one beat/pump making it much more efficient. This will bring down the amount of beats/pumps needed to throughput the same amount of blood. I know this is a mouthful but I proved this theory on myself. I started serious training for mountain biking 16 months ago. When I started my max HR was tested at 207. It is now 200. I avg 186 on a race and feel fine right through. I always say your max HR is what your max HR is.

See these two posts I did a while ago. You can also see the training video clips on alloutmtb.co.za https://community.bikehub.co.za/topic/104222-insanely-effective-core-strength-exercises-by-alloutmtbcoza/ https://community.bikehub.co.za/topic/104033-now-on-alloutmtbcoza-building-leg-strength-for-cyclists/ We have also developed a 12 week strength building program that is already used by 24 other hubbers. PM me and I will mail it to you. Will soon publish the programme on the web site as well. Enjoy!

Thanks Mark. How do I get to this trail, wood love to ride it.

So what will capture the imagination in your opinion Joe?

True, but then again, a road bike has much less friction and weighs about 4kg+ less.

Hey BigGuy, pm me your cell no. Maybe we can meet up.

Nope sorry, Im doing it on my 12.5kg Scott Spark 30 Dual sus. And no I im not putting on slicks.

Thanks Rudo. Im not sure the other hubbers understand what a massive challenge this is. That pass is not your average climb or training ride. It looks like we're gonna turn this into quite a big thing. We might move it out to 30 July and dedicate that whole weekend to the challenge. Im just waiting for final confirmation from BigTree. I would then invite 10 other cyclists to take on the challenge with me. We will get in a camera crew to film the whole thing and get some real big Sponsors in on this. I will put the invite out as soon as I receive confirmation from BigTree. So those of you who want to be part of something big, keep a look out on this post.

Oh my word, what am I letting myself in for here. Im one of those guys that just cant say no to a challenge. Unicycle, that wont happen, but riding up there a second time..... Ok, I will do the first attempt, If i get to the top in one piece, I will decide if there's anything left to at least attempt a second one. I will put every bt of detail on video so you guys can en joy the suffering on my face when you see the video. Ok, R10 a pop, for BigTree foundation says I can do it twice.

No way, will never make it twice. Maybe next year but will need some nice cheerleader girls

I dont think im gonna look anything close to friendly, thats for sure. And problem is that its very cold up there so I cant even look forward to a cold beer. Maybe a cup of hot horlicks. I am a bit nervous about the whole challenge. If those wonds picks up Im gonna pray that I never attempted it.

I'm taking on which will probably be my toughest challenge on a bicycle thus far. This weekend we're going to Swadini for a family weekend. On Saturday I'm taking my Scott and I'm riding up the Mariepskop(Limpopo) pass non-stop. The total total distance from bottom to top is 28km and you climb 1000m over the last 10km to the top. Total ascent is 1350m. Most of the road is rough tar, cement and gravel. It is very steep and there are some hectic winds at times. Altitude starts at 600m and ends at 1950m. Can I do it, I believe I can. I have a seeding of 38 and getting better with every race. So I consider myself a racing snake and strong climber. We will put my whole effort on video and publish on AllOutMTB next week. Now I would like to turn this challenge into a small charity fund raiser for BigTree foundation. Any idea's from you on what I can do to turn it into a fund raiser?

We were at tygervalley college this afternoon to get our quad riders out on the route for the best camera shots for tomorrow's nissan hazeldean. Its freezing out there. And take your hats off to Frits, Tim and the rest of the organizing team. Those guysar still out there now finalizing things. I dont think they feel their limbs anymore, nevermind fingers.

I love hearing stories about such awesome service. I also have a thule 2 bike express carrier and very happy with it.

thanks guys, we will keep them coming. Next up will be Northern Farms and Voortrekker monument.

We made our way to Teakplace see our review and video. It was an awesome experience. http://www.alloutmtb.co.za/content/teakplace-mtb-trails

yes and more.

oh yes, velo, did you see that we now officially advertise on the hub and were planning to increase the advertising at the end of the month. I must add, it feels awesome to support such an awesome forum and community such as this. We now pay our hubbing rates and taxes.

Will surely do. A lot of work going into this at the moment. Will go through a teething phase from its launch. Will rely a lot on everyone to get it right and to constantly improve it. But the hubbers have shown that they are always willing to support, try out new things and give feedback.

Hubbers, I had a few PM chats with some of the guys here regarding this initial post of mine. Firstly I want to apologize for offending anyone if I did. That was never my intention. And then regarding the initial post. I brought the message across in a totally wrong way. Especially with my statement of "Currently service level all over SA are pathetic to say the least." That was a big generalization which Tumbleweed is absolutely correct in saying I cant proof it. It came from myself and one of my friends that are really fed up ourselves after me switching to my 5th LBS because of sub standard service and my friend at his 3rd lbs. I was basically more ranting and letting my emotions getting through in my post. My dearest apologies for that. There are bike shops and a lot of them, actually most of them that really deliver top class personal service and I think I might have found one. Yes they have screwed up once or twice but they have corrected it very willingly and apologized. And that is part of good service. We at alloutmtb will closely monitor any bad ratings that come through. It is very easy to see if some is giving a bad rating just for the sake of it. Giving a bad rating you really need to give a good explanation of why and the circumstances. If not, the rating will be unpublished and the member contacted by email for more info before the rating will be published again. Yes this will take a lot of effort and time of us but Im hoping that this will give the rating system more cred. Im also hoping for bike shops to engage with us. If they see a rating on their name that they are really not happy with it will be nice if they can contact us. Similar with good ratings. I know for a fact there will be much more good rating than bad ones. If anyone has any further suggestions of how can further improve this and really put in a huge effort to make this work I would really appreciate. Im really doing this with good intentions your help and support will help us a lot. Thanks

Every one is allowed to have their own opinion. And so are people allowed to compliment good service and complain about bad service. All Im saying is that it would be nice to actually all of these in one place. And yes, I dont think there is one shop that will only have good ratings and customer experiences, that would maybe be possible on a perfect world. Regarding you comment about me punting my web site here. I have chatted to Matt the founder of thehub and apologized for the multiple posts. In addition to that Im allowed to do posting in moderation which I will do from now on. AllOutMTB will also be advertising on here from the end of the month, and in that way financially contributing to the hub. And finally. No I will not be adding forums to my site. That was never and will never be the goal of AllOutMTB. My aim is to contribute to the cycling community by using my skills (programmming) and do it because I have a passion for mountain biking. So to sum it up. We have the functionality for everyone to rate their LBS. Use it dont use it. As AK said, in the long run it will help everyone, customers (they can be heard) and bike shops (get feedback on their customer experiences).