Austin

Mooses and Vikings suck!

Bradley got a 3rd place in a 3 man breakaway group in the UCI 1.1 Gent Menen race today. He started attacking with 20km to go and got a small group away. Then broke them up again to form a 3 man group. Austin2007-07-11 10:59:16

Neotel- The 2nd National Landline operator.

I am getting a new Duel Suspension. Will post pick when I get it and will invite all for some great Freeride trails around Heidelberg.

New, bigger sponsor, Continental team in 2008, big long term plans. Team essentially the same for rest of 2007, but big happenings for 2008...

Would like to sell my 2006 Felt MTB. Full XTR, Mavic Crossmax Tubeless. Very light! R7000

Ye, Mike rode a superb race controlling his pace very well and doing his job to perfection. Really showed his promise as junior in the race. Great ride by the rest of the team too! REALLY PROUD OF 'EM!

Jnrs: 1st- Bradley Potgieter(Tekton) 2nd- David Maree(Tekton) same time 3rd- Dylan Girdlestone(HiQ) 4th- Pieter Botha(Tekton) 5th- Reinardt Jv Rensburg(Tekton) They(Tekton) off to Europe tomorrow. Good luck!

it is live on www.cycling.tv on the net

Susi has also cut off one lever of his lock out and drilled the other one. Narrower BB and also Dura Ace changer on the front to save weight. Some exrta alu taken off at BB. No gloss finish for weight. Less filler in carbon used in new frame. Very race oreintated.

I didnt really want to get into this discussion as I quite like Pieter S . ,but ye I feel the squad could look different. Just to answer the above quoted: Both J's didnt ride SA's last year. The previous year the one got gold in the TT and silver in the road race and the got silver in the TT and Gold in the road race. That year Jaco was quickly ranked in the top 10 in the world cups in Europe and came 2nd at the Jnr Het Volk. Jacques won the King of the mountains jersey in Tour de Lorraine, a world cup in France. Their jnr results translated well into the first years as Pro's as Jaco in 2006 won the Tswabac Classic and podiumed in at least two other Classics. In 2007 Jaco had a late start due to injury, but in the Giro he was the only u23 rider from SA's to podium on a stage in the Giro. Also finished in top5 SA u23 riders overall. Jacques also finished in the top 5 in the Giro. Both riders could also hit the front and work in the Giro as they did so in the Giro on stage 3 to see if Christoph Sauser can make a go for it up the finishing hill. Jacques won EP Herald from a guy like Jeremy Maertens and Waylon( who was the winner of Egypt, but didnt do any work in the EP Herald break, yet still could not match Jacques or Jeremy) The fact that results or performances in Asia or Africa tours are being used as guides is rediculous. The only place where we can compare is in SA and it is difficult as we have short, easy races where guys like Jaco and Jacques have to work mostly towards the sprint for Nolan. Same goes too for any other young propects. And last year they spent large amounts of time working for the very talented Velits Twins, etc. Maybe Davel does well in Europe, maybe not. Same too for Pieter. I think is is premature to select a team for a six month period. Keep this selection if that then be the choice. Select then three other guys after SA's and bring the weakest guys back here. By the time you reach GP Tell you will have an idea who your team must be for Tour lAviner. Ausies do it like this, Danish do it like this, Germans do it like this, etc. Then apples are compared with apples and you dont select riders cause you try and compare and african result with that of any other. By the way, I think Pieter is exciting.... Austin2007-04-02 08:49:22

My 2c worth on couple of the posts: 1.Here my chance to take a dig at Malcolm as he wins too much...... NOT! Malcolms frustration was echoed by many, including the so called funriders who had to stop and wait for the Elite bunch to go past, only thing was that being in the winning situation, his actions were displayed to all. 2. Cycling gets VERY low public exposure and teams depend on this little bit they do get and have to go for the win. Am sure whoever rode into the lady would be concerned about her well being afterwards. If an Exec from MTN was in the car to see that chaos, it would have been bad PR for the sport of cycling. 3. Cycling recieved the most exposure in the general public when the funride figures were the lowest( during the old Rapport tours). With the increase in mass participation all event organisers geared their marketing angle towards how many participants they will get instead of how many will be watching on TV or reading in the press. We have unfortunately settled to sell our sport to max 70 000 people instead of millions. It is now commonly viewed as recreation and not sport. 4. We could get best of both worlds ( Participation figures and following public) by a little better planning. To diss the Pro's or the funriders is just not on. Races need the Pro's for TV exposure (no elite competive aspect, no Sport TV) and also the funriders for income. The pro's also need th funriders to later on encourge youngsters to tkae over from them 5. I agree that race should be longer and harder, otherwise no Olympic medals. Take the Giro del Capo for example. Although shorter routes, it is going to be much tougher with a lot of climbing and power sections. How do we prepare our top teams for these 140km, though terrain stages: We hold a couple of pancake flat races over 100k's and call them Classics. Then we want our SA Teams to win???

I will be riding the Giro too!.... In the car! Will go ahead and gooi some donuts on the gravel road to create some atmosphere...

Austin Jnr,aged 2 found the kitten eating his lunch last Sunday. Very upset he started slapping the poor thing around yelling "blitSem, blitSem!!" Must be Breeze teaching him this!

Hi Bruce There is something you guys misread all the time. The "extra tests" are not anaerobic or aerobic test as you guys know or understand it. It is done to evaluate certain criteria to determine muscle fibre recruitement. Power or HR test per say do know show you directly what fibre you are recruiting. When doing threshold type tests it is important for me to understand the way the athlete is usung his Typ 2 A fibres and wether he is exploiting the maximal aerobic potential thereof. It is easy to get it wrong by doing all the in-the-book tests. These are great for 100k riders or if you know he constantly does 160k races, but when preparing him for 160k races in europe, yet data received is mostly from 100k races in SA, it becomes vital for correct fibre recruitement. Example: Last year at Edenvale classic one of my guys won the Elite race. He broke away and only had to do 4.9W/kg for last 5kms to win. That is low, but because the whole teams prep was such that their type2a fibre recruitement had a very aerobic nature, while most other SA Pro's had a anaerobic nature of recruitement, the others could not respond due to to much muscle fatigue due to anaerobic nature of function. I will gladly sit down for coffee with you sometime over this and other training issues. Am just getting very busy now as I have to run a team, do the training, plan Euro schedule, etc .I have to shift focus for replies each day. PM me for email address or phone number to meet sometime. We can sommer then rave about the Force groupsets too.

PM me to get my email. The whole team stays in Heidelberg GP. Come ride the trails here, have a coffee at Wiesenhoff with us and will share some ideas. Have got 4 guys in team without Powermeters and have to improvise for them. Maybe some of those simple practical ideas may help.

For this guy yes, for others it will differ. For average Joe the normal CP prediction will do. Work personally in their faces every day, so that the judgement call made. He has tendancy to use too much anaerobic muscle fibre and want to extend the usual shortened test to counter bad results. When I use the normal CP model to determine values it predicts a value about 5 watts to 10 watts higher than the "funny" 45mins test. Those watts important to monitor that he grows aerobically more than anaerobically as many South Africans have done due to the short nature of our races (which adversely affects performance on international scale where higher aerobic state is crucial. Will not see the true benefits out of this in any test or practicals in SA, but quickly got awakened to it when got the results of constant Euro racing of young SA riders. Anyways, you doing a great job getting people onto power. I may be different, but made these descisions based on the fact that a live with these guys, eat with them, go on tour to Europe with them for at least three months of the year and therefore it works in this sitution.

BikeMax: 1.Yes, for that specific individual. 2. Not daunted, just not at race level focus. And if he does motivate himself to this level, it is not good as it will count as a racing day and in our business( Elite racing) you have to manage these days very carefully so not to have too many. 45mins for this athlete, yes. Again very individual, but pretty close to results of 60mins, and shorter methods( Scherrer/Monod). Normal riders: Shortened methods of Scherrer/Monod(using their CP determined form the 1, 6, 12, 20min test to determine power... you know the rest)Now I am starting to sound technical, ai.... 3. As standard, yes there are other well documented shorter methods. Per Elite individual: Maybe use it when in season to track him. By me: Depending on many factors of each athlete and time in racing season. 4. yip, it is the case, but not the reason for shorter test as explained in point 1. The MAP test at the end and the way I use it is the reason I brought up difference in aerobic state of riders during such TT test. Why I do it and how I use it has been key to some of the results. So that my property for now( maybe worth, maybe not worth much) Again, not trying to convert anyone, just tried to state that W/kg has many fascets to consider in promising end result to riders: But got the result, saw the smile on the guys face...am happy. Hope to keep on making selected few happy. Ciao for now!

Here a scenraio: If at the end of the day( even though I was just trying to comment on the fact that W/kg doesnt mean that if you are equal to another, your performance will be the same) my guy might be 5.2 to 5.6 or somewhere in that region( if my method are so "Out" of touch, he did manage to win races/titles that could require such efforts to win. Now I would have read it like this: KOM Europe title win= 5.4W/kg ( That could actually be possible...) Maybe this guy is doing something right, albeit not the norm. Good, at least he is trying something and also adding his part to advance the sport, just as I am trying. Not just: That not right!!( I am not here to eplain everthing, unless it was a panel asking me out in order to implement my methods in any organisation. Would then gladly go through all the steps) I am an advocate for training with power, but it is still relatively new and in the last year many things have been discovered in terms of actual practical application thereof. So am glad that you offer that service to the SA cyclists. The more guys that do, the more we all will learn and grow.

Well, as I did say before. Because of what I read form guys like Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi . (The studies of the kopdokters say that Elite level athletes perfom way different in competition than in training. Yet, you must not try to always duplicate his actual race psycology when training. These Elite guys actually switch like this to protect themselves from burning out.Training= goal awareness; racing= immediate activity awereness) and what I learnt as the norm I took results from actual competition where I saw the riders do the values. I then with trail and error used certain creteria to determine what would work best to test the guys I am involved with to get a results that would reflect competition standards( 60 mins effort perception in training is much more than same perception in racing and because goals and efforts are racing related, that for me must be the determining factor). I also found out that some guys can do a normal FT test with way to much anaerobic activity or muscle fibre usage, while other salthough also at maximum effort for a FT test can be much more aerobic and therefore their FT would actually be a higher platform to race from as they are more areobic on their FT value. Le Peleton: I agree in princaple what you say. If these guys progress one day to the top level they will be measured by higher authorities( maybe their will be a new Coggan who will be the authority, maybe not). Testing will also still then vairy as equipment used, in or out competition becomes a factor, etc. As I said, I am trying something new, it has been working quite well. I gave a simple example on the start topic that even if someone has a 5.5W/kg like Brad at Threshold, he can still be far away from a good TT finish( As Epoh questioned and understood.) Again Bikemax came out to say how I do it is not right: "There are several ways to estimate FTP and one way to measure it accurately - 45 min TT followed by MAP is not one of them." I never explained how and why it is used and am not going to as that is my own methods. I did say that he has done in competition on 60mins at the same values. Never slated Bikemax for any of his methods, yet I must hear this.... Maybe my methods die out or maybe get popular, so dont sweat it to much. Just trying to be innovative. Will not carry on with this unless the results were forthcoming too. Untill then will carry on in my "Laymans ways"....(I train this way= I better my results or win) Layman's yet empowering to the athlete too...

Boet, you asked for the method. The stats I posted. He does 5.4 at a usual 60min test, but I test otherwise because of the psycology of exertion perception. Results are what any top athlete is after, achieving them is good enough for me. Getting caught up on the protocol, accepted methods thing just does not cut it for me. Results were given as you questioned the method and doubted. Winning two stages of TransAlp, SA and a KOM jersey in Europe could surely have provided a clue that the stats are close to okay as those kind of wattages are required to achieve those results. Going into a may way, your way method would just be stupid. I know your methods or Coggans methods work, never said that it did not. All humans differ and in our attemps to make measurable explanations we have devised these protocols and methods. If you coach someone, scientific principals is only one of many, many tools you use. If you write a training schedule it may be one of two or three. If you write a test results sheet, then it is the only method. It is all about feel and understanding, no science in that. We both love the sport and want to help others in our own ways. Going on about my ways as you did will not make me change them, especially if they have produced the results and continue to evolve as I learn more about cyclists and cycling as a whole. I have not once tried to change yours..... For me performance and the desire to better it is like a living organism growing in many different ways at different times. I for one, am fascinated that it has so many aspects.