typhoon

Having a cold did not make the 2 days any easier! So quite happy with my times Day 1: 04.06.58, Day 2: 01.54.39 last km's of each day saw me fade quickly and got passed quite a lot. the river portage was nasty, thankfully i think it was only about a 10min wait. The final climbs up next to the road weren't fun, day 1, seeing the big concrete pillars was like dangling the carrot in front, until you got there and sent further along, much mumbling! The grass sections were bad, thank goodness for dual sus, albiet a 26er, made it a little easier. As for those muddy sections! chose the wrong side of the last one on day 1 and sank to a stop. otherwise thoroughly enjoyed it.

Shew! That was a toughie!!!

hmmm.... i only got into C... eish... last race was VG Nissan... 3 Towers doesn't count as racing. So this should be fun.

Why only 1 day? taking it easy in your old age? 2 days for me, hopefully i'll be able to keep up with Mike.

might find this interesting: http://wolffmark.wordpress.com/2013/09/15/with-all-thine-offerings-thy-shalt-offer-salt/

hehe we did, until you broke the trust by stealing my things

hmmm.....

get both, and throw in Tread mag too, gives you lots of reading material.

make sure to have a look at the Challenges on the living vitality site. quick and easy to earn extra points. Like riding a 50km ride with give you 250, you can reactivate that challenge multiple times. there is also one for the 100km ride. logging your weight once a week for a month is another. no reason to worry about the carry over points. plenty of ways to easily get back to Gold/Diamond.

sounds like a plan! if i'm not working too.

DISTANCE, COST & START: 82km / 08h00 43km / 08h30 20km / 09h00 eish... 82km... that's gonna hurt

Sounds like this should be fun, even if we can only ride the trails in our areas.

Have a look on BuyCycle.co.za as well, quite a few options there. Stan's ZTR Medalist 650b Wheelset - R9,599.00 Custom 650B Wheelset - ZTR Crest Rims, Hope Hubs, Pillar Spokes - R6,599.00 American Classic 650B Race Wheelset - R5,899.00 Ritchey Vantage II 650B Wheelset - R5,199.00 American Classic Terrain 650B Wheelset - R3,539.00

Check on the website, some of the test you have to do a couple months apart, like the physical fitness test, twice a year, 5 months apart. Can't remember off hand what the online and health checkups are.

and just an FYI for those who don't use a garmin or one of the "supported" devices to upload your workouts to living vitality. Living Vitality uses the mapmyfitness.com as the backend, register, link it to Discovery... (I actually can't remember what I did here, whether i just used my same login details as discovery or something) But once you're in mapmyfitness.com, you can upload your tcx, etc. files from which ever device, these will then count towards your workout points and show up in Discovery's points monitor. As everyone has said, getting to Gold / Diamond is seriously easy. Currently on 87000, got to 105'000 last year (individual) without even doing the fitness test, which would add a good couple thousand. First week of each year, do all the online tests (health, stress, online fitness), pop into a Dischem or somewhere and do the health test and hiv. log any races you do, 5th one gets a 5000 bonus. The one sag i always run into quickly is the max points for fitness, think i was getting the "limits apply" by April, so you still get points, just not nearly as much.

Each stage race is 1 event, with 3 Towers, I found it listed under the last day of the event. The categories only go up to 75km+, which stage races fall into. 1 day events usually fall into 50-74km. (for mtb anyway) Also, if you log 5 events, you get 5000 bonus points.

This is quite an interesting blog on cramping by Mr Wolff http://wolffmark.wor...alt-offer-salt/ "It’s a fact that the main cause of cramping is due to an undertrained muscle" So as many have said, going out too quickly, means you pay later. Maybe worth trying a different gel? A friend has stopped taking Hammer gels as he says it makes him cramp. experiment on training rides. Think the general rule of thumb is take 250ml fluid with each gel and gel frequency can be extended if taking other forms of energy drink. perhaps it was the bending down/over while fixing the puncture? Couple times I've noticed on mtb races that the muscles start twitching shortly after a portage, but that's also most the time going out too quickly to start with.

Had a fairly good ride on Sunday, started in D. Pace at the start was fairly quick, thought I'd managed to stay near the front of the batch, but it must have split somewhere and was left in the 2nd D group, looking at the results i got a 35/524 batch finish, didn't think there were that many D'ers in front of me. Quite happy with the 2h36. an improvement of 11 mins on last years first attempt. Also saw the guy on his S-Works going up the hill on the N14, was suitably impressed! Was only my 3rd ride with the 50mm wheels on the Trek, thankfully i didn't have anyone telling me to keep my line... you know, it's not always easy Big up to the roadies in the batch who know all the warning hand signals and things, warning when a slower rider coming up on the left or right, sand, bumps, etc. Also a little confused with the timing and mats and start gun thing... Started my Bryton when the gun went off, stopped it when i crossed the line. trip time: 2:36:01 ride time: 2:36:00 Racetec time: 2:36:32. Not really sure how it can be longer, only reason maybe is that i see we started at 06:47:37 (according to the time on the Bryton), so give or take a couple seconds, technically they started us all 32/37 seconds "late" and still took the time as 06:47:00 start time. oh well, happy with the results.

Got to the Dome at 9, had my race pack by 9:15/20, quick wonder through the expo... usual stuff... unfortunately had an appointment at 10, so couldn't stick around too long. definitely helps getting there early, the queues when i left were crazy. it's a plastic bag this year, unlike last, haven't really looked in the bag, but there is a bottle

Hoping to better my 2h47 from last year.

and then Eric working his magic and making sure everyone comes home on a different route.

Been a few threads about rollers/idt... https://community.bikehub.co.za/topic/131140-tacx-rollers/page__hl__rollers

yeah

My bike is classified as AM on the Ghost website. 26", 120mm travel front and back, 69` headtube angle, 180mm rotors front and back. descends fairly well and not to bad on the hills, albeit a little heavy

Remember seeing this route a while ago that Gugu did. http://www.endomondo.com/workouts/32247875/2827883