Trelawney

Update ... picture today at Casa-Lee Conference / Wedding Venue not far from Boschkop area ... looks like the leopard has broken cover ! Apparently parks board people have started tracking it to remove it.

Hi, Its not often that I get to experience service at an awesome level but, when it happens, it needs reporting ! Just want to thank Ruan and the guys at Tool Up Cycles, based at the Grey Owl Shopping Center (off the Old JHB Rd near Midstream Estate) for building my bike onto a new frame today. They received the frame only this afternoon and transferred everything so I could make my race tomorrow. I collected the bike from their shop just after 7.00 this evening, they stayed late to get the job done. Guys, your combination of good technical knowledge with uncompromising service is something special in this day and age ... Thankyou ! Trelawney. You can find the guys here : http://tool-upcycles.co.za

Friend of mine runs a venue off the Bronkhorstpruit Rd, kind of north of the N4 , opposite side of the highway from the Boschkop area ... They spotted a leopard yesterday evening walking down the road near their place, yikes :-)

Regarding the temperature, I noted last year that it was - 2 degC when I parked my car at 7.00 am and a whopping 8 degC when I got back to my car around midday, there was also a steady icey breeze blowing. This year, the ride should be a lot warmer, temperatures in the area are quite mild right now, coldest is around 6 degC at dawn, forecast for Saturday is about the same. T.

I'm doing the 70 km and will collect from FPC at Gift Acres on the Friday morning, if you enter, I could collect your stuff for you and we can swop it either that night or on the day ? Let me know !

Agree that the downhill was hectic, lots of loose sand and gravelly bits, I'm sure a number of people came off. No news I am aware of the 'crashee', hopefully he saw a doc for the concussion. As for Mrs Pink, she left the scene a minute before me and I never saw her on the route after that, perhaps she did the 35 km ... Or I just never managed to catch up to her on the 70 km, quite likely ! Was a great race though, my third one from Babbas, I'll be back :-)

I stopped at the crash a minute or so after it happened, there were 2 guys helping, I couldn't bring myself to just pass so stopped, got out my first aid kit and a very helpful lady stopped and started to clean him up. He looked concussed, in a real daze. He had cuts on his face and arms but nothing broken as far as we cold see. By the time the truck arrived he was patched nicely. Not sure who the lady in the pink shirt was who stopped,but thanks, you really took charge. And thanks to the guy who stopped and handed over some alcohol swabs also. Reason I couldn't just pass is that I got knocked off my MTB a couple years back and broke my arm. I will never forget the appreciation I felt for the two guys who stayed with me that day, a crash victim benefits from having people near them, talking to them and generally helping the time pass until professional help arrives.

Second time I've done this one (60 km), enjoyed it once again but knew from last year that there would be initial bottlenecks, I managed just over 6.5 km in the first 30 minutes because of them, but thereafter it opened up and it's a nice course. Murphy was ever present though, on the first loop one of my jockey wheels disappeared (thankfully I always carry a spare) and when I over tightened the jockey wheel bolt, 10 Km's further on it jammed and my chain snapped, took 20 minutes to get the (so-called) quick link to work :-) will need to laugh the time off on this one for sure ! Was thinking I could have got a medal for bike mechanics !

I put some in my homemade energy drink recipe, leaving it out makes it less effective. With it in I seem to have much more strength for longer and finish races feeling much stronger. Have never correlated it with recovery, I'm sure it helps also.

Someone at work yesterday said they heard of 2 cyclists being hijacked on the Boschkop Road recently, someone in a Bakkie, pulled over, gun out, bikes in the back and off. Anyone know anything ?

Just a follow up on this glove debate & how cold rides can be. I went out last Saturday in Pretoria at 5.30 a.m. on a 80 km MTB ride from home ... it was damn cold, but how to bench mark that in terms of whether the gloves worked ? Well, at one stage, the tube from my Camelbak that I drink through, froze solid for about an hour ... and my fingers survived ... my thumbs suffered a bit but the rest of the digits were OK ... so I think these Black Diamond gloves are not too bad ... I'm happy for now ! T.

It was the inner one, the one that has the 90 degree bend at the bottom that helps keep the chain on the lower jockey wheel. I managed to buy a new one though today at that bike shop in Moreleta Park (Checkers Centre), R75 & they fitted it for me while I waited. I can ride again ! T.

I have a Shimano M772 rear derailleur and in an event today, one of the side plates broke, is it possible to just buy one of these plates ? (Not sure what the technical term is, but a rear derailleur has two main metal plates that the two jockey wheels are attached to and this is what I'm referring to as a side plate.) Thanks, T.

Watchit young man ... I'll keep my early morning photons to myself next time !! Now I have my new winter gloves I am fully tough again :-)

Hi Chris, Just wanted to thank you for the info about the Black Diamond gloves. The pain I experienced a week ago was a serious motivation to find a solution and I eventually bought the Black Diamond gloves you mentioned. I went out yesterday morning at 5.30, I reckon a couple degree warmer than the previous Saturday and experienced a mostly comfortable ride. I certainly did not come close to frostbite like the previous week and even when we went through a low lying region where we saw ice in the puddles on the side of the road, I did not experience much discomfort (and that section lasted for almost 30 minutes). With my previous gloves I wore some (nylon ?) First Ascent liners with the gloves and decided to do that with these, so that's what my experience is based on. My conclusion is that they made a very real difference to my ride experience and far out-strip the other brands I have tried that claim to work in cold weather. After last week I was contemplating giving up cold rides, after yesterday's ride I am quite happy to take on any ride. And when I think of that Nissan event in July / August last year down near Walkerville where it was -5 degC when I parked at 6.45 a.m. at the Blockhouse Engen One Stop before the race, I just know there are plenty cold rides still to come this year ! Thanks for the info ... I think I can now claim to have a good set of winter kit for Gauteng winter rides ! T.

You have my sympathies too ! I got Glandular Fever just before my 18th birthday (they don't call it the kissing disease for nothing !) and it flattened me like the person above, sleeping 16 hours a day, totally wiped out. I recovered after about 2 months and then went and did a long cycle, 24 hours later it was back and I was flattened for another month. It almost ruined my exams at that stage of my life. I then went to varsity with it a thing of the past (no symptoms in previous 4 months), joined the university hockey team, trained my guts out and got flattended again with it. My neck glands also swelled up and I could feel that lethargic feeling just radiating out of my neck all the time. Keeping off alcohol I have come to realise is important and, then drink loads of water everyday, it really helped bring the symptoms down for me if I put a pint mug next me when I work and constantly sip & refill. Put up with more frequent toilet trips, its worth it. I also found that I felt worst when I drank hot liquids (tea / coffee / soup etc) and so I stopped all that as well when I had symptoms. You'll have to find out what works for you. So any advice around taking a COMPLETE BREAK I would go with. I am one of the few people though that got it recurring for life, very few people I speak to ever had a recurrence but I have been flattened a number of times in my life and I am now 47. What I found was that if I did huge amounts of exercise (really tiring myself out) and I did it with a cold or virus in my system and, worst still, when the weather was really cold, that I could get the symptoms back again. Not as bad as when I first had it but never the less it screwed up the next 2-3 months. Over the years I have asked every doctor I've ever visited as my GP for advice and they always seem surprised that it re-occurs, having little idea on how to handle. A possible break through came for me when I described the above pattern to my current GP who said that if exercising when a cold / virus is happening or has just happened in the recent past is a reason why symptoms can kick off (irrespective of whether I cycled) then I should work to improve my immune system. His advice which I have now followed for the past 4 years was to have an 'intragam' injection at the start of each winter (during April) .. he uses it and hasn't been ill for 20 years, all his nurses / nursing sisters use it too and claim great success with reduced illness levels. Plenty on the web about it. Since starting it I have hardly been ill and sore throats that appear usually disappear in a day or so, completely different to my previous experience of going down every 3-4 months with something nasty. So I suppose I just had a crappy immune system from day 1. I am now doing more exercise than I have ever done in my life, riding long MTB rides (up to 100-120km) and having an absolute ball. I still listen to my body though ... if I get a cold starting up, my glands can react pretty quick, so I back off until the glands go down, these days that's about 2 days instead of my previous 2-3 months experience. As I said, you have my sympathies ... statistically though you should not have my experience of best part of 30 years having it recur ! If it does recur, perhaps chat to your GP about the Intragam injection. Take it easy, T.

My Saturday ride had mostly uphill for the first hour and I utterly froze until about 8.15 when things started to thaw around me, so on Saturday I found the cold debilitating even though I was going relatively slow on the uphills (I think we averaged 16 km in that first hour with some 400 m of climb). Always a chance I suppose but what I'm angling for is whether you saw a significant difference between the two days, which I think you are saying you saw, I don't think 2degC difference would do that necessarily. Ho hum, decisions, decisions.

Did you use liners or just as is ?

Oh, so Anatomic don't just do bike gear, they do ski clothing too ? Didn't know that. And you tested them last Sunday if I am correct ? Wasn't quite as cold as Saturday but would still have been a few degrees above freezing I guess.

Chris, you said you went & bought the ski gloves, just wondering which shop you bought them from and approx at what cost ?

The Ski Gloves.

Where can you buy these ? I'm in Pretoria.

How easy is it to operate the gears with the ski gloves ?

Can anyone vouch for a pair of gloves that work if you ride at 0 degC (e.g. Gauteng winter) ? So you add on the wind chill factor and they still work. I rode yesterday morning starting at 5.15 ... I think I came the closest I have yet come to frostbitten fingers. During last winter I managed to : - Solve how to keep my head, torso, arms and legs OK. - Partially solved how to keep my feet warm (jify bag trick cuts air flow through mesh in the shoe & helps keep in the warmth) - Totally failed at the finger frost bite thing. And yesterday's ride brought me back to the frostbitten finger state, yowser, I had forgotten how cold your fingers can get. I have tried two different winter gloves that claim to work but both fail miserably, even with liner gloves inside. I have considered those hand warmer tabs (seem expensive and no guarantee of a warm finger just because your palm is warm). Short of carrying a can of deep heat and blasting my hand once an hour, what other ideas ? Surely the Scandanavians or Eskimos must have sorted this out ?! T.

Good luck with losing the weight and all your other great goals ! I tried losing a few kgs about 18 months ago and this was my first ever diet attempt. I also cycled lots during that period. My conclusions to lose weight were that you have to get the calories under control and if you actually take note of what's in everything you eat you have a much better chance of reaching your goals. Simply keeping the calories the same and adding in exercise guarantees nothing, if you start eating more because of the exercise you can happily gain weight despite the exercise ! I eventualy tracked my food via www.crosstrainer.ca software, they give you a 40 day free trial as I recall. Adding my food choices to the software and using some of their pre-loaded data really opened my eyes to how many calories I was chucking down every day. I then also found that I could drop my calories lower and lower but that my metabolism just slowed right down. The trick I eventually used is to try and fool your metabolism by selecting an average no. of calories per day, say 1800 and making sure you average 1800 a day but never have 1800 more than twice a week, so the one day I go down to 1600, the next up at 1900 etc. By keeping your body guessing, your metabolism doesn't seem to slow as quickly. I also found that I would have Saturdays off the diet, cycle in the morning, then eat whatever I felt like for the rest of the day (usually avoiding fatty things), that really seemed to confuse my metabolism, I usually weighed more by Monday than I had on Friday, but if I dropped my calories back down from Sunday and did some exercise, I could continue to drop again the next week despite having seen my weight loss slow down towards the end of the week. I comfortably lost 1 kg a week for 13 straight weeks and have kept it off. Make sure you have a strong mental picture of how you want to look, pay attention to your calories, keep your metabolism guessing and keep regular notes of your weight. The weightloss people say people who weigh themselves every day lose weight much quicker than those who don't because they don't take their eye off the ball. Good luck !