wayne's world

Most popular bike is the 29er full susser x- country style of bike, but there are 30-year old 26’ers, Cyclo-x, enduro machines, single speeds, tandems- you name it. Some hard-core guys do the event and then the following weekend run the Leadville 100 miler!! I custom built a ‘everything’ carbon, 19.4 pound 650b hardtail x- country bike, that in my opinion was perfect for the event. 29er hardtail, carbon is the best race weapon I feel.

Forget the nine hour unless you are seeded in the front, say 200 riders, are really fit, and have a good day-this is one tough ride-it all has to come together on the day!

Wayne here-ex RIDE photographer, now living in USA. I raced the 2015 edition of the Leadville 100-9hrs 29 minutes. Raced the inaugural Cape epic from Knysna to CT, 2004. Leadville 100 is a 1-day out and back event. Massive climbs, beyond anything i've ridden in SA, or Lesotho for that matter. The big shite is the altitude-starts at 10 650 feet, climbs up and down to the 50 mile point at 12 500 feet and returns up and down to 10 650 in Leadville. Not technical at all (cyclocross bikes manage) Also, if as I did-you get an entry into the race by lottery and you want to race, not just complete the event, then you will have to-as I did, go and race another 100 km Mtb event and do a really good time to improve your start position, or potentially have a 1000 palookas in front of you-all yapping in American and screwing up your line into the first massive climb only 10 km's from the start!! Really a cool event, but nowhere near as scenic as the Western Cape-y'all will be disappointed. Watched Ben Meldt Swanepoel come in 11th-the top dogs there are super tough athletes.

yip-here we go

thanks man! wayne

A few pics from the hillclimb/time trial earlier. Great crowd participation on the hairpin and awesome display of riding talent and power.

GC as follows: Pfannberger 14h26'03 hanku kachelhoffer @1'04" jacques van r @1'08" vroome, chris same time cardenas, felix @2'35" george, david @2'40" could be an interesting hill time trial given how awesome both hanku and jacques are performing-stick it to them boys!

Barloworld and MTN beating the snot out of each other and letting someone else take the stage win.

some general pics..... i need sleep....

sean-at times it felt as if someone had opened the oven and fanned that heat direct at us. these are tough customers our pros-i reckon some of these guys dug deeper today than ever before!

this was the ride of the day-mannie came from the chasing bunch and paced dan for the best part of 2/3rds of the final climb and launched him into the midst of the main manne giving dan the opportunity to finish in 6th place whilst mannie himself still manages to finish10th in same time-mannie i bow down to your guts and determination today-wayne

hey sean-d'ya think it's all done and dusted or can any of our teams get a rider up the road to do some damage?, and who could that be?