Martin Albrecht

Thing is though, you can’t win the epic in the first couple of stages, but you most definately can lose it there, if the gap to the leaders is allowed to stretch too much. most years it takes 8 days of solid, consistent racing to win the men’s race.

Thanks, I will go have a look at Flandria tomorrow.

What e-BIKE for under R60k would you guys recommend, if buying new? - Used for commuting in Stellenbosch - Will be used on tar, gravel/farm roads and some light trails (but less than 10% trails, and nothing technical) - Must be a flat bar bike.

The rider you are afraid to name for fear of Emma letters is easily one of the most decent people in the sport. he made his mistakes, he owned up, he served the ban and he has held his head high since like a proper gentleman. Maybe just maybe it’s time to let this go. The lifetime ban, if it’s still in place doesn’t apply to him anyway. So just leave him be.

All the carbs in the world won’t save you if you run out of electrolytes. Sodium and potassium are very important to keep things functioning. But calcium is the other one people don’t watch, because you don’t really lose it through sweat, but if your calcium levels drop too low, everything basically stops working catastrophically.

Sorry if I was coming across as an absolutist. I have reread my posts and see how I may have come across that way. I agree everyone’s mileage may very and I 100% recommended everyone over 45 doing regular high intensity, endurance sport like cycling should get some testing done regularly and get professional advice on nutrition and training when cycling hard, because bad nutrition and overtraining can be as dangerous as being overweight can, especially as you get older. Please don’t anyone take what I am saying as gospel. that said, I do disagree with the obsession with Carbs that’s starting to become the in thing again now. Very few people would be needing 90gr/h of carbs in regular cycling training, unless there is something else wrong, or you are trying to mask a bad diet with simple carbohydrates. with regards to glycogen storage. That is mostly physiologically limited, and no amount of training will significantly increase your ability to store glycogen. But fat adaption is the big game changer, because the more efficient you get at burning fat instead of glycogen/carbs, the more glycogen you will have available for the sprint finishes or the big climbs at the tail end of the day. Also, training with low carb intake on 2-3 hour zone 2 rides will never deplete your glycogen stores, and doing that followed with good nutrition afterwards, will make your more efficient at replenishing glycogen stores overnight, which is also important. If you start carb intake too early on low intensity rides, you immediately blunt the fat burning (becasue your bodies senses a more effiecient fuel source, and rather just burns the simple carbs directly out of your bloodstream). So you can’t improve your fat adaption if you have free flowing carbs in the system. in terms of training the gut, yes, you need to do that, otherwise you will be in trouble come race day. But you don’t need to consume 270gr of carbs on a three hour training ride to do that. There are also brilliant whole food options that you can consume throughout a day on the bike that will allow you to keep energy up, without GI spikes, and you can then save the gels etc for that final push at the end. (pay attention to just how much actual food Grand Tour riders consume while on the bike in a day, for example)

I’m no coach, just a layman with a keen interest. just remember, it’s all relative. For you or me, Zone 2 might be 160-180Watts, for someone like Pogacar or Beers, their zone could be starting at 320Watts.

Classy comment there. Maybe if you guys spent some more quality saddle time “prodding along” in Zone 2, you would actually improve your overall performance significantly, and could afford to spend some time getting your all around nutrition sorted, along with training proper fat adaptions. You do realise that upwards of 80% of your training should be happening in Zone 2 right?

You can get it from Dischem or most health shops or home brewing/garagistsa suppliers. Fructose you can also just get in by using a fruit juice as your base if you want. Honey is also a great option to mix into your bottles, or just chow straight up, since it’s naturally on average a mix of about 40% fructose, 35% Glucose and about 8% Maltose (or other disaccharides)

There was a similar thread a few weeks ago about carb intake. reading some of the above, I am again shaking my head and wondering what sort of numbers you guys are pushing that justifies all those carbs. ‘Kaze Pete seems to be pumping in more carbs than pro athletes during a TdF stage. As to the OPs question, it’s always going to boil down to what your intensity levels are, but generally speaking training rides of 2 to 3 hours long, you should be good on just plain water, maybe a bit or oros or lemon juice for taste. If it’s hot, or you are generally an heavy sweater, add some electrolyte to the bottles. Aim for around 500 to 600 mg/l of sodium (that’s about a quarter teaspoon of regular table salt per litre), and about 300mg potassium (that’s about 1/8th of a teaspoon of low sodium salt). You can use straight forward off the shelf cerebos salt (the one with the red lid is the “low sodium” potassium chloride option) to get this. at that ratio your keeping it in the isotonic range so it can all be easily absorbed by the body without causing any unpleasant side effects. Once you go past 3 hours, or your are really pushing very high intensities, start adding some carbs to the mix. But ideally don’t exceed 60gr/hour unless you really have to, and if you realise 60g/h isn’t cutting it, I recommend you talk to a sport nutritionist that can help you work on a fueling strategy that works for you, and won’t have long term negative effects on your liver and kindey function. For most of us average Joe’s, our off the bike nutrition is much more important than cramming in as many carbs per hour as we can on the bike without totally messing up our guts. At zone 2, where you should be doing the bulk of your training, you want to be using fat stores as fuel. Even a relatively untrained athlete should be getting about 70% energy from fat in a zone two session, with glycogen making up the balance. There is virtually no limit to the amount of fat you can burn. You can’t bonk when fueling with fat, so this is what you want to train your body to do. It’s only once you go into your high tempo and threshold sessions that you start fueling almost exclusively from glycogen stores, and then it’s important to keep them up by fueling with simple carbohydrates so that you don’t bonk. But I see so many people that start off going heavy on the carbs from the get go consistently. Then you can not achieve higher fat adaptions, and if you are running on carbs from the get go, you are going to run into trouble on longer rides or races (especially longer than 3 hours), because you are going to reach your GI limits too soon, then deplete all your glycogen and then bonk hard towards the end. If you do proper zone 2 fasted training regularly, you teach your body to be more efficient, and you increase your glycogen storage capacity in your muscles, which should be the ultimate goal, as that is always where the power is going to come from for the big efforts late into a race. Dont bother with carbs, especially on training rides under 2 hours, unless it’s a threshold or above session. For races, try keep carb intake below 60g/h for as long as possible (but obviously this will need to be tweaked based on intensity etc)

Was thinking the same, but then it also all depends on the route. Also, if the group is advertised as 21km/h but is actually 24km/h, that could catch you out. but mainly terrain makes all the difference. I made the mistake of joining a medium fast trail running group that other day, thinking 10km/h is nothing. That’s only 6min/km…. Till I realised how steep the terrain was…. Then I nearly died and quickly dropped back to the “social” group

In a mixed group like yours, the pace should definitely not be getting set by someone on an ebike. That would piss me off properly as well. shop around, there must surely be a club/group that has no-ebike groups in your area, otherwise start one. I, as an owner of an e-bike amongst others, will not ride with a training group that allows e-bikes. It just goes against everything about why I ride.

Why are international entry fees silly? As a concept, it’s not unique to the CTCT? I’m genuinely curious to know your reasoning here?

Nevermind. I just realised TP support uploading workout plans in advance on the free version. Seems you need either a pro subscription to upload it in advance. I’m sure that used to be available on the free version. Will keep adding manually in the mornings for now, and decide later if I really want/need a pro version subscription. Already on Strava Pro, so it gives me most of the data I need anyway.

Evening guys. I have come a bit unstuck with uploading a training plan into training peaks. I have the plan in PDF format, and in a spreadsheet. I have exported the spreadsheet to a csv file, but when I try upload into training peaks I keep getting a “failed to parse” error. Anyone dealt with similar? What’s the catch? Is training peaks very specific about the table format? If so, where can I find a template? Adding a months workouts into the Calender manually is a bit tedious.

Still waiting. Have given up bothering keeping track. Will do as others have suggested and simply wait for it to eventually rock up. I have been given a R130.00 voucher due to the late delivery, but highly doubt I will be using it

Nope. In the SNB case, the victims were all legally minors. So that excuse doesn’t hold water. He probably also had inappropriate relations with clients who were technically adults, but the ban is in connection to clients who were all minors at the time (and some may even still be now)

As many others have mentioned, we all only have the parts of the story that we have access to. If you somehow know the whole story that exonerates SNB, why not share it with us? Why didn’t you share it with the CSA panel, or the high court? Also, anyone who thinks 17 year old girls are innocent is a fool and very naive. It’s exactly because we know how “provocative” they may be that people in positions of power, like coaches, should practice better discretion. A married man in a locus parentis role over underage girls simply doesn’t engage them if they begin to display unacceptable advances, and most definitely doesn’t watch porn with them, or engage in text message exchanges about anything other than the business of coaching them. In fact, if they begin behaving in a “not so innocent way”, a responsible adult would insist on only communicating with them in an environment where a third party is present, or via the parent/guardian etc. the story about his wife being brought up, was brought up by me. I did that because I followed the story closely at the time when this broke. And at that time, they sent out a press release saying she would be running the business while he steps aside until the outcome of the hearing. now the outcome has come and gone, and his name is still on everything, and he still seems to be fronting the coaching business. Despite the ban. Regarding his claims of being one of the highest qualified coaches in South Africa deserves being scrutinized, since he fails that standard on ethics alone, but also on his acclaimed qualifications. There are loads of coaches in South Africa with much more advanced qualifications, that do not claim to be “the most qualified/highest qualified coaches.

Yeah, it was almost 15 years ago that this wet down. But I am also glad they followed the route they did with this. I was very impressed with the way they handled it, an also the way the courts handled it. Contrary to what some here believe, the victims in cases like this are very well protected by the courts, especially when minors (at least in this case they were). I do remember the initial reporting on this, and I understand (even if I don’t agree with it) that the parents did not want to proceed with criminal charges. But as has been said before, they don’t have to. If their sufficient evidence, the state must investigate/prosecute, and if they don’t, private prosecution is also an avenue that is now possible. CSA has a duty of care to take further action in my opinion. As I mentioned in the example with Scouts I was involved with, the organisation was able to proceed with a criminal complaint in their own right, and they were successful. The minor victims also never had to provide evidence in open court, and there names were redacted when the judgment was handed down - as is common practice in cases involving minors.

CSA is able to lay the criminal charges as well, and if the state chooses not to prosecute, they can proceed with a private prosecution. The Afriforum private prosecutions arm headed up by Gerrie Nel is there exactly for cases like this. As I said, I was indirectly involved in a similar matter at a scout group where one of the adult leaders groomed and eventually statutorily raped a teenage girl under his care. The girl/her parents did not want to proceed with criminal charges, but Scouts SA decided the internal disciplinary action and banning him from scouting alone was not sufficient, and they went ahead with criminal charge. The guy was charged, got a suspended sentence and will for the rest of his life be a registered child sex offender, which makes it impossible for him to work with children ever again. the girl was protected throughout the process, was never required to appear in open court etc.

If the parents of the minors involved choose not to proceed with criminal charges (as it seems they have not), then then CSA should get a letter from the NPA confirming they are not going to prosecute, and then instituted a private prosecution via their attorneys, or maybe even via Gerrie Nels/Afriforum private prosecution team. CSA also has a duty of care responsibility here, and at the very least they need to get him listed on the sex offender watchlist/NRSO. There was a similar situation a few years ago at a scout group, where the parents of the girl involved did not want to proceed with criminal charges, and were happy with the leader just being banned from Scouting, but Scouts SA proceeded with a criminal case, and had him succesfully listed a a child sex offender.

This is very disappointing. In my mind a ban should be a ban, especially from peddling his services at CSA or UCI sanctioned events, shouldn’t be provided any credentials, access tags, vehicle permits or any of that. Any athlete competing under his banner should also be blocked, forcing them to find another coach.

This is what I was worried about. But surely they must be able to draw a line somewhere. Surely he can’t be walking around and officially supporting his athletes at CSA Sanctioned events, and have access to a rider paddock etc where accreditation is required, like what other coaches who aren’t banned are?

Also interesting to note they have now recently (like in the last 48 hours) updated the coaching page on their website to highlight that Bester Performance is not affiliated to any sports governing body. I’m reasonably sure this bit wasn’t there a couple of days ago: “Best Performance is an independent high performance cycling coaching company and we do not form part of any sports governing body.” But, that brings me back to my initial question. What sort of “teeth” do CSA have to enforce this ban? Can they take further legal action against him for continuing to provide coaching services in cycling? Or is he able to carry on with business as usual, just not with a UCI coaching license? I assume he would obviously not be allowed to support his athletes on site at any sanctioned event, but what can they do about him continuing to work as a performance cycling coach?

You literally can’t make this **** up…. It’s sad. Not just the most qualified in South Africa, but rather most qualified in the world….forget about all the actual sports scientists with actual PhDs in human performance and all that. Certificate course from the UCI is all it takes to be the most qualified coach in the world… (ps: not dissing the UCI coaching certificate on its own, but using that to back a claim of being the most qualified in the world, is a stretch of the imagination as the best of times)