dexterdent

It's called a lance, helloooo

I find comfort in the fact that only now we are really starting to see EPO-era climbing records being challenged, and that is with 20+ years of technical, nutritional and training progress on the side of the current crop, not even to mention I think the amount of people trying to be pro is higher which means more opportunity to find the outliers.

Indievelo is free for now, and while in general not as good as Zwift, it's better in some ways (there is a good thread on here). I would say it is a direct replacement for Zwift. MyWhoosh is free and looks pretty good, but I haven't tried it. I tried every single other popular one and did not gel with them at all. The video-based ones particularly, but lots of people love them.

I think the problem is this - you probably pass / get passed by 1000 cars in a quick Saturday morning ride. If 99% of them are considerate, careful, awake drivers, you still get 10 morons that are going to kill you. And even though I did not go out on Saturday due to feeling unsafe - given the amount of cycling happening on a weekend there are not really THAT many incidents (every single incident is too much, don't get me wrong). We are dealing with some outliers people here that need to be stopped. These morons probably struggle with basic reading, let alone driving a car on roads with various distractions. Any solution that does not deal with these people does not really make a difference. So what options do you have? 1. Separate areas for cycling / walking / driving and POLICE this. The nice little cycling lane separate from the road on Main Rd in Green Point is great, but even though very well marked, most walkers / runners seem to prefer the cycling lane. And the chances of us getting more of these are very slim anyway - maybe a nice aspirational goal. 2. Get people to follow the laws, which I think are pretty good if followed. This means when someone breaks them (I don't know, maybe almost killing someone while speeding drunk, or carelessly opening your door in front of a cyclist) this needs to be publically, quickly and harshly dealt with. At the moment there are very little consequences, and thus very little awareness. I used to think cyclist behaviour was part of the problem, but come on. A bad cyclist wastes maybe 15 seconds of a law-abiding driver's time. A bad driver KILLS a cyclist. This is not equal.

Thanks, that's useful feedback!

Anyone bought some bibs yet from Temu? The local ones are just getting too expensive (at least for indoor training) - and seems like there are quality issues anyway (enough threads on that already...). I'd love to support local but R2k for an entry-level bib seems a bit excessive.

When the Pyga Stage came out it did something to me. I wasn't in a financial position to afford one, but I could dream. A couple of years later I had a slightly better salary and found a well-used one in the best colourway (I think it was limited to something like 50 bikes?) - instant buy. It got delivered at work and the 3 hours from delivery to clocking out was the longest ever. I've since "sidegraded" to the mini-max setup, and even though I don't get out on the bike much, every time I walk past it it makes me happy. I hope to get out more.

Which cleaning agent do you use? I am a little afraid of hydrogen embrittlement but it's not clear which South African liquids are good.

I also had that issue - you need to use a different email address for the SAseeding thing. I spoke to the organisers and they were aware of the issue, but said the workaround would not cause problems later.

Thanks, looks like you saved me R750

Did you get the Meroca one? I've been eyeing it, as even with the current 20% sale Redshift landed is going to be around R4k, and the Vecnum one even more. Not a whole lot of reviews for Meroca online, but what there is is not negative.

I get it. It's easier for me to assume they are clean and get the enjoyment out of cycling now, and potentially get burned later. You can assume doping now, and have some potential feed-good later. But what I am trying to say with the post is that it's not a stand-out performance. It's a weakish field that didn't try that hard. That's why I find it easy to like Pogacar, with some notable exceptions, he tends to win many stages but by smaller margins, which is easier for me to explain (as if my explanation carries any real weight - it doesn't of course).

Completely agree - hence my "glowing" statement. I've just seen some mild language in this thread and on twitter suggesting that Poga is doing something extra, when the data doesn't seem to suggest the same.

He did the final climb, on a relatively easy mountain stage and with a tailwind, in a similar time to famous climber Tom Dumoulin in the 2017 Giro. Lost about 27 seconds to the glowing Pantani record, with 25 years of bike and training/nutrition progress on Poga's side. I suspect the gap is more due to a lack of top-tier competition than to any superhuman effort.

I haven't really done much over 6 hours - maybe a couple of rides in total. I am planning some later in the year (let's see if gravel is as fun as it looks), but most of my training has only been to try and look as cool as possible going up chappies every weekend. I suspect I'm not fitting a gravel 100miler in under 6 hours though. Weekday sessions are usually indoor ~1 hour with a single bottle of mix (I try and do a bit of zone 2, but I also need some joy in my life so often do more fun things like races or alpe du zwift PB attempts), and weekend rides are typically 4 hours with two bottles and one gel per hour (160g from extra strong mix and 22g per gel). I also have some whey protein after a ride (PSN LIfestyle on takealot). I tried using a variety of "real" foods but it just didn't work for me. I aim for 8-9 hours per week, the most I can fit into my schedule. Since I got this sorted, I recover much faster and no longer have headaches the rest of the day after a long ride. I am however not advocating that this is the best or even a good approach - it just works for me and my particular situation. It's also really cheap I can imagine getting to longer durations will need a different approach - I just don't like stopping mid-ride.

Another shout-out to the Feva seat - managed to get my one-year-old on my gravel bike and it's been my favourite rides ever. He can't get enough and we've done 10km plus rides without him showing signs of tiring. Not a lot of quiet roads around home though, so it will mostly be a weekend thing for the foreseeable future.

Look, this isn't fancy, but it gets the job done: https://runographer.com/2015/12/homemade-sports-drink-for-the-ultimate-diy-running-nutrition/ And it comes in at under R4 per 60g portion. I add some Oros for taste, and it's not too sweet owing to the maltodextrin. Get the dextrose / malto / citric acid from a brewer's store like cactuscraft. The only thing I struggled with was the low-sodium salt for some reason, but found it at a random Spar. It has sodium and potassium, and you can play with the concentration based on your sweat rate / concentration. It doesn't have magnesium, but you can probably get that from your food or supplements. It's so cheap that I don't feel bad using it for every training session, which means I can go harder and recover quicker. And I can spend a bit more to get the good gels for outside rides (nothing beats SiS in my limited experience).

Which wheel did you go for? There are some really cool options out there in drastically different price ranges.

I just added all my new data points to the spreadsheet I made for this "investigation" and the results stayed pretty much the same. I haven't done any big efforts on the segment for a while so it mostly added data in the low and mid-watts range, but they were pretty consistently better than the old bike, and mostly better than the Aero bike with crappy wheels. So Aero wheels for the win! It's the best upgrade I've ever done and if you are lucky enough to have the cash around, I'd get the wheels before getting any other major upgrades. There are some other benefits as well - the slightly larger internal diameter of the rims seem to make the wider tyres less bulbous, and there is a reasonable amount of evidence showing wider tyres are a good idea. I'm running 28mm GP5000s, but would look at going up to 30-32 next time. The increase in comfort is significant. But the other important lesson that I probably did not highlight enough above - if you separate the major equipment upgrades out, my power output typically only accounts for about 50% of the variance in my times. This "revelation" helped me cope with a slightly disappointing CTCT result even though I was better prepared than other years.

Some of them ARE being sold at bike shops already. And a lot of things that people think are not Chinese are. What these online places do is cut-out a lot of the middlemen that sometimes add very little value and sometimes add a lot of value (if someone goes to China, inspects the factory and stand by the product, they are adding value. If someone buys 100 SCVCN sunglasses for R70 each and resells them for R500 in their shop or on takealot, they are not). If you can find some reputable online reviews of products listed on Temu, I don't think there is any more risk buying from them than from Merlin. I've been able to find some great things on Temu for prices that are so cheap that any perceived "gamble" is worth it. I'm talking things like a couple of cool different top tube, frame and seat bags, some sunglasses, some basic tools and a couple of Ridenow tubes. I'm even eyeing a new saddle that is very "mirror" like for a very reasonable price. What I do think there is an issue with is the pretty lax copyright laws. Buying a fake Pinarello frame is probably wrong. Buying a frame that looks a lot like one but doesn't claim to be one? Not too sure about this yet.

I have also tried Indievelo (along with pretty much ALL the other virtual sims, none of the other ones got close to grabbing my attention). It is a direct competitor to zwift but worse in many ways - far less people, routes, gamification, training plans, worse graphical design, etc. Zwift racing also has no peer in my opinion. However, it has some KEY advantages: 1. Zwift is amazing but justifying 17 USD per month is hard when there is a similar option for free (for now) 2. Indievelo allows for offsetting of your gears. Not the "trainer difficulty" setting that just changes the slope simulation (although they have that too) - with Indievelo I can actually do fast speeds on the flat without spinning out on my gravel bike, which I can't in Zwift. Potentially fixed with virtual gearing, but only limited trainer supported for now. 3. Indievelo has a functioning gradient / profile map (this is more an annoyance that Zwift just can't get this right for some reason) I've cancelled zwift and it will remain cancelled until indievelo starts charging, after which I'll have to re-evaluate.

I live in the Cape and would never do this.

Had a long gravel ride in the rain last weekend and couldn't see anything through my wet Sutro Lites (Prizm 24k - for bright conditions and great at that). I might come to regret this, but I just ordered some SCVCN Photochromatic cycling glasses for R72 off Temu so let's see how it goes

I'm finding Daryl Impey's daily content with David Higgs pretty entertaining on youtube - looks like two friends having a great time.

To be clear, I don't have any issue with the feed - it's pretty much the only live mtb race I watch even though I think mtb is much cooler than road. It must be crazy hard to get anything done in the conditions they need to work in, and things like the helicopter and ebike shots, rider interviews and lack of Cecil Nurse ads are great. At the same time, there is no such thing as free content, except if you value your time and attention at zero. By choosing to watch this rather than a new Zero Friction Cycling or Veritasium video, there are some (very small) financial impacts to the content creator. My attention is the product that is being sold and competed for.