Johan A Marais

There is always an idiot trying to race you or drop you - wtf?

If you check the number of full sus bikes versus the hard tails, you can see the decline in real MTBikers...

And in the Cape Times this morning the PPA said that once identified they will be banned from taking part in the race on Sunday.

So a horse walks into a pub, the bartender gave him a look, and ask, why the long face dude?

Your size and within your budget...

The R2500 cheapo comes with a lock-out on the fork - good buy

Wow - a photo does say a thousand words! Epic!!

This event is starting to get a different kind of reputation... must be something about "die bos in die berg"

Phone and owner reconnected - good deed done, now bring on the week end...

Morning, picked up an iPhone Tablemountain today. If you think it is yours PM me with some detail.

Do it - it is the right way to go with this. Allows for full transparency and control.

I came past just after the accident happened. Lady cyclist (new commuter), seen her a couple of times, still nervous, tried to stay on the bike path between the tree and road. Her front wheel slipped off the pavement and she fell onto the road, fortunately for her the driver in an approaching car was wide awake, and missed her. He also stopped to help! She hit her head hard and hurt her leg, otherwise she is fine. Hope she comes back... And thank goodness she had a helmet on. I see so many woppleheads riding without helmets on the bike path. In her case, it would have been very serious had she not had one on...

My Polar Belt works fine - changed the sensor to my Garmin and it picks my HR up on my Edge 510 just fine. Polar belt is a much better design and one can buy them separately. This should solve my problem as I never had any issue with my Polar belt...!

Yip this is new - not same as mine. Not the battery - been replaced - not the sensor as the Garmin indicates that it picks it up just fine. Like the look of this strap... Thanks

Thanks, that could be the one I got with my 510... I still however had problems, Sprortmans replaced it once. It just seems to lose HR every now and again. Very frustrating. I did found that the tighter I have it, the better is seems to work, but one can only have it so tight...

Hi Sentinel - I have the same problem - is the "new & Improved" strap availble to buy - do you know? I should just send mine in to be replaced. Where did you sent it to?

Does this not make your clothes dirty?

Naas - running with a 2013 HT S-Works Specialized Stumpjumper with the Specilaized Carbon crank.

Thanks kennyg. I have no problem getting into or out of any of the gears - works like a charm. Will check into the cable loop...

I have chain rub on my XX1 when in the 11 and 12 gears on the back cluster. It sounds like it is touching something, but it is not. However when in these gears and I back pedal (Bike Stationary) it gets stuck, or the chain wants to move to another gear as if the derailleur is not 100% aligned. How do I fix this? My LBS already had a look and seemingly could not solve the problem…

These are actually great - you can hear the traffic and talk to your mates whilst listing to music. And there is an option that can handle calls also...

Australian Tour de France stage winner Stuart O`Grady has admitted using the banned blood-booster EPO before the notorious 1998 race. O`Grady, who announced his retirement this week after helping his GreenEdge team to a team time trial victory in this year`s Tour, became in 1998 only the second Australian to wear the race leader`s famous yellow jersey. "Leading into the Tour I made a decision," the 39-year-old told the Adelaide newspaper The Advertiser in an interview. "I sourced it (EPO) myself, there was no one else involved, it didn`t involve the team in any way. I just had to drive over the border and buy it at any pharmacy." O`Grady, a former track cyclist who won medals at three Olympics, including gold at the 2004 Athens Games, took the first of his four career Tour stage wins that year in a race that was overshadowed by the Festina doping scandal. Festina were kicked off the race after a medical team member was arrested at the French border and customs officers seized banned substances, including EPO. The newspaper said O`Grady had been named in a French Senate inquiry into sports doping which looked at the 1998 Tour and found the top three finishers, Italian Marco Pantani, Germany`s Jan Ullrich and American Bobby Julich, were taking EPO. "The hardest part of all this is I did it for two weeks before the Tour de France," added O`Grady who was riding for French team GAN at the time. "I used extremely cautious amounts because I`d heard a lot of horror stories and did the absolute minimum of what I hoped would get me through. "When the Festina Affair happened, I smashed it, got rid of it and that was the last I ever touched it."

It is going to be a wet one, and that turns this into the true "Challenge" it is named to be...

They really do rock! The best LBS to have close to you, and the coffee in the shop is also world-class! Kudos to Gary, Mike and The Team...

The way I see it, simple. They have broken the rules, they would not have been able to win otherwise. It was a cold, rainy day - a warm jacket was as important as being given a new pedal... Therefore they have received important outside support that allowed them as a team to push hard. Shame on them for taking the win well knowing this... PS: It did happen, it is not just the imagination of the magazine. Anyone watching the TV-Coverage would have seen this! Shame on all of you who think this is good and right and the way our Pro's should race and handle themselves. Shame on the organisers for allowing this to happen and not do anything about it, or at least make a statement on why they have made the decision they did, if they did make a decision.