dave303e

and this is why we will always have bike theft in SA, there is always a willing buyer...

boy oh boy what a game changer. Thank you for this

Ya I also pick and choose where to use them, 100 milers I will always have a pair with the 2nding team just for when the sh hits the proverbial fan as Jewbacca mentioned. Fast runnable 100 miler like Karkloof I would definitely have a pair for in case. But I wouldn't carry them the whole way. For me big climbs are where they pay themselves off, you can pull your way up them. As an adventure racer I do some paddling training, I have got a good background in swimming and I am really good with a spade. So I have a solid upper body to put into the poles which saves the legs in a big way. If you have aid stations often they allow you to pick up and drop off poles as and when you need them so you can plan your race around that. UTMB you can see the top guys are poles out every climb and away for the runnable sections. Back to a point I made earlier and Jewbacca also mentioned, storing poles and accessing them is key. If it is a faf you end up carrying them on your pack the whole way or in your hands the whole way. If your bag has a good way to put them away without taking pack off then you will use them better. Watch the top guys at UTMB, they take out and put away poles at pace with no faffing.

this^^^ I have a similar build. Every time I look at a gravel bar option it leads to new shifters, new brakes and unless you are happy to trust and adaption a new derailleur as well. Gravel shifters and brakes are expensive and like hens teeth second hand. Change the tyres, a rigid or lauf fork on there, narrow the bar a bit, slap a big 40 tooth chainring up front and enjoy it till you ready to commit further to a full gravel build...

Unpopular opinion, these are not made for sharing so decide they are yours and get the right length for you and don't get adjustable Z poles. Any telescopic system will fail eventually and they are just a faf all the time. Z poles are the best way to go, personally the black diamond distance carbon ones are amazing, they are light and they are solid. Mine have taken a lot of abuse and are still perfect. I am weary of the glove models vs standard fixed straps. Saw a person at ARWC who lost the glove during the race and then had a trekking pole with no strap/glove, makes it really useless. Carbon for the weight, aluminum for the price. Up to you. Z poles can be a pain to carry when you not using them. Salomon make a quiver that you can attach to a bag. It works great and you can get them in and out of there in a flash with no faffing.

I like the way coffee was referred to as a drug. It has actually been an interesting journey for me over the last year. A GERD diagnosis means I need to manage my stomach closely otherwise my daily intake of rennies and regular mid race chunders is quite alarming to say the least. So I started with a few dietary changes and then the dietitian recommended ditching caffeine....... The first few weeks were rough. Remember many state that caffeine is the single best legal performance enhancing drug available. If you were to replace the word coffee/caffeine with cocaine and explain your day in terms of caffeine intake it would go something like this: Wake up and the first thing you do is have cocaine and breakfast, then you head to work and have some more as you sit down to get going. Mid morning when your energy dips a little you take a break and grab some more cocaine to get you to lunch. After lunch the digestion makes you slower so you have more cocaine to get you to the end of the work day. Then late evening before bed you have one last hit before bed. Sound familiar to a lot on here? It was really a big hit for me, the first 3 weeks on decaf coffee was rough. I felt tired and sleepy the whole time. Now I feel a lot better, it has seriously helped manage the GERD to a point where I am off the meds and feeling better than ever. I do now use normal coffee strategically(yes like doping) but it is was an interesting adjustment. Regarding the amount of coffee I drink- I still follow the usual routine. Coffee for me is a process, a break at work, an enjoyment on a long drive, a relaxing evening tipple and I still jump at the chance to get the mocha pot going on the gas cooker with a view. It is just caffeine free. Working with fresh beans makes decaf so good that very very few people can tell the difference in taste. The beauty of decaf is that you can have 10 a day and not feel guilty or have the jitters/runs...

That is an interesting article. I read another article a few weeks back and followed it up with confirmation from a family member on the ground. There is a bit of a push to revive the Arabica production in the Eastern Highlands of Zimbabwe again.

hahahahahaha, oh boy that is a poke at a bear. That being said my registered dietician had me at 80grams of carbs an hour for our little EC jaunt last year. I reused cycling shorts, socks and other stuff to pack extra food in the crates but it was definitely worth it. She also got my GERD to a point where I can manage it without medicine and my quality of life is vastly improved... Remember fad diets are a great business plan. Bring out a new diet and market it. People try it out and lose weight and rave about it. Books, juicers, food, random food and other cr...p is bought. months later the diet is unsustainable and the person fails to follow it. The person then regains weight(and a few extra kg) often because their stomach has been trained against it. ( after banting did you notice how many people couldn't handle carbs well) Januworry 1st - rinse and repeat with a new diet... Ask any person who has spoken to you about dieting, the odds are they have tried more than one fad diet...

A good bean to cup for day to day is really a great balance between convenience and good coffee....

If you get a bikebox from the bikebox company, the box folds up to a manageable size. Then rent a car with a bike rack. You can unpack in airport parking lot(I have done this before) box goes on back seat, bike on rack and you sorted. Then you also have an easy way to get to start line etc. R2000 will nearly get you 3 days of a basic car and rack and add R600 odd for the bike to fly with you. Vs R1500 to ship it to a branch and then you kind of stuck with a tough to move object that is not where you are arriving and you are hamstrung reliant on others leading up to the event if you need last minute stuff. My 2c as well from flying to multiple events with bikes locally and internationally. Get you and the bike there at least 3-5 days before, just in case your bike doesn't arrive right away. Not such an issue locally but if there are transfers you can be sure your bike will be a few days late.

high pressure hose for the win. Preferably in a friends driveway...

I ran in salomon for many years. I still have a pair now. I had a short stint in Hoka speedboats and they were good as well but didn't last off trail running. The last few years I have been rotating between Nike Pegasus trail and Adidas terex speed ultra 240's. Pegasus trail is what killed salomon for me. I bought brand new salomons and them at the same time and comfort and grip wise I just never went for the salomons again. The Pegasus is my day to day training shoe. They last really well as well. The adidas terex are good fast race shoes and also really sturdy considering how light they are. You can often pick up Adidas on sale as well.

will have to look into this a bit more, thank you

I track them as notes in trainingpeaks for coach so he knows why it is all red Interesting to check for danger weeks, now I am diving through my data to find my danger week. Turns out it is the week between christmas and new years. I blame being social... So for analytics trainingpeaks will allow you to export to excel. Then you reference a master excel from powerbi/google notebooks and build your monitoring dash and analytics there. I have exported the last 5 years now into a single book and every few months or before/after big events. I just dump the latest data into the master excel. It is over analyses of the highest order, but it is also just who I am and what my professional skillset encompasses. I would screenshot but I am far from the pc with that dashboard on it. What is good is that I have running totals avaialble for time and distance compared to the same date previous years and breakdowns and waterfalls with dominant sport. basically I have the year in sport as a running total. But for the threads sake, it was a good year with 45/45/10 run cycle paddle split. Even better knowing there was 6 weeks with nearly no training after ARWC...

I am taking a year off AR, so I am going to have a crack at comrades and a marathon. I have never run a road marathon or road ultra, but he distance is well well within what I have run before on trail. The challenge will be the pace It has been fun working on the pace and the threshold pace so far. I am hoping to run dolphin coast marathon in March as a qualifier. Coach is excited as this is really his focus area. I have been on gardening leave for around 3 months now, half of which was used at ARWC and recovering from that. Otherwise I have been working like a builder/ farm laborer and actually did a fair amount of paddling last year so I have about 4kg of upper body muscle to try waste away by March. It will be an interesting year, something a little less crazy and a little more focused than usual.

I am privileged to live in an area where I can get a 30km loop on gravel in and I know most the laborers farmers along the way. So for training sake I ride alone a lot. It is either rouvy on the trainer or the dirt. Weekends and longer rides I have some very well positioned routes that are also fairly safe. Running it is the same, luckily I have neighboring farms to run so I can get a good 10km in without leaving a private farm now. Riding singletrack is not somethign I need to have. 90% of gauteng singletrack is flat winding trash to try squeeze extra km's on a small property. all it does is make strava to look like I threw up spaghetti. Doing true te4chnical riding alone just adds risk. It also helps with my schedule, with a baby in the house, I either go stoopid early or take a lunch time nap gap. I have also planned routes around avoiding potential ambush areas, I prefer wide open dirt roads where you can see anyone coming from at least 5-10m. Safety tracking wise- Whatsapp live location is very under rated. You no doubt have your phone anyway. The Mrs enjoys the convenience. I send her a link as I leave the house so she also knows when I started running/riding.

just to put this in context.... Nicky raced 197 hours and 930km at Adventure Racing World Champs in October. She then won the ladies race at Sani stagger a few weeks after that. Munga was a last minute entry...

There was a an attempted theft of a fortuner in the carpark there on Sat morning as well. about 30m from the 'security guards.'

GX AXS all the way... I have not adjusted my gears once in over 18 months and it hasn't missed a beat. My derailleur took a direct hit from a BMW GS 1200 and still shifted perfectly for the rest of the ride(200km) and I didn't even need to change the hanger/dropout. In a world of 1x drivetrains you have access to data to see how much time your were in which gear and workout the perfect size chainring to run for that area and your fitness.

Carry 24/7, not just on a bike. That 33% unemployment means there are millions of starving desperate people out there. Back a dog into a corner and you will see it's teeth, when a 3rd of the population is backed into a financial corner then you know there are plenty teeth out there.

I would rather throw my bike at them and as they catch it draw and end the issue. If you get knocked off your bike, you are now separate to your gun... not ideal. Daily carry guns should be cleaned and oiled regularly and glocks are mostly plastic anyway.

https://www.511tactical.com/select-carry-pistol-pouch.html you can at least keep it concealed with quick access with the above. Not the fastest draw, but certainly not bad.

We were pushing hard till the climb out of baviaanskloof, lost a team member to covid on that section. Poor guy, nothing he could do, and not many would have made it as far and fast as he did with Covid... We slept 3x as much in the last 2 legs as we did for the first 7 legs and the pace was slow as we were just aiming for the finish(unofficial). I have been flat since, run a few times, no major niggles, just feeling pap. Even the day after, I was not stiff, just moeg. My team mate has won a marathon since WC somehow, but she is supernatural. I am taking December off and then will reassess racing in January. There is too much that I am not happy about in the sport which is seriously detracting from and ambition of racing and the local calendar is just not going to work. The closest event next year will take longer to travel too and from than it will to actually race. Which given there are 6 events and I live close to the largest settlement and majority of the population in SA. It is a joke. So I will probably start building for an ultra or 2 in biking and running and put away the AR for a bit...

that is a lot of bike for the rands...

How has the recovery been your side? That was a proper course.