Knysna Weekend Report

[MintSauce]

Had an AWESOME weekend!

Don't know what happenned to the Hubbers Social since we got to Knysna only to find that the designated meeting point, Stones no longer existed. Oh well!

 

Stayed with Marius, Lilo, FanieFiets, bored girl,  _C50_ and his chicky and myself. Also briefly met fandacious and his GF.

 

Great to meet all of you!

 

Was informed upon my arrival to Knysna at about 7pm Friday-night that my mechanical expertise would be required to sort out bored girl's bike. And this before I'd even met her....I feel so used

 

As for the race....SARA got a lift up/down with me and on the way up convinced me not to chicken out of the 85(76 really) event. Was so thankful afterwards. Even though I suffered it was an AWESOME route. Not very technical but really beautiful with some shortish but really sweet singletrack! Had a blast! Riding time on my Polar was 4:57, but I stopped a couple times so it was probably quite a bit over 5hrs. Cramped a bit at about 50km and took it very easy for the next 10km amd managed to recover. Felt quite strong the last 10km though.

 

So, might not seem like much of a performance, but believe me this is a huge improvement for me. For me to maintain a 159avg HR for 5hrs is a f_ing miracle! 3 months ago attempting that would've seen me unable to ride after about 2hrs....really.

 

Still is slightly depressing to think that Marius maintained basically the same avg HR yet finished 1h20min before me....oh well. One day

 

Sunday morning Marius, bored girl, SARA and myself did the Harkerville Red Route on another perfect weather day. What a freakin great ride!

 

Here's another reason I'm so happy. The day after finishing the longest single MTB ride I've done I was able to ride Red Route and actually felt quite strong the whole way through....it's wonderful to be getting fitter at last!

 

So thanks to everyone involved for a really great weekend! Was just good fun (even though the promised partying never materialised)

 

Looking forward to the next time!

 

 

 

 

 

 

[fandacious]

Me, BG and Antoinette (My other half) arrived around 6pm friday night. Had a carbo load supper @ panarottis (a little pasta, lots of beer). Saturday was pretty tame (seeing as the bokke lost).

Sunday:

The hill out of knysna was awesome. Seeing as I weigh nothing and the only thing I can do on a bike is climb hills, I opened up a gap of around 1:30 on all the unlicensed riders on my way up the hill. Of course you can't ride like this forever and it wasnt long before the first bunch caught me.

 

From there until the turn off at Wittedrif just after Plet, we motored as the wind was behind us and it was mostly downhill.

 

We stuck together until the main hill in wittedrif where a breakaway group of around 6 riders pulled an unsuspected attack and drop me & the rest of the group. It was one LONG hill against the wind up wittedrif. I picked up a super strong rider (he rode the 85km on Saturday) For about 40km it was just him and me. One by one we picked up the riders from the group that dropped us on Wittedrif. As we reached the top of the main hill into Knysna a big bunch of around 30 riders (Faniefiets was in this group) caught us and all hell broke loose during the downhill sprint into knysna. The road traffic was quite bad as well as the fun riders taking up the whole road. Its quite impressive seeing a bunch of around 40 riders sprinting downhill. Fanie finished 12th and I finished 15th.

 

Not the most enjoyable ride ever. No scenery and WAY too many insanely long hills. And the wind was blowing against us the whole way back.

 

All in all, the weekend was a blast.

 

I think next year I'm gonna do the MTB on Saturday and then have the promised party Saturday night!

[rock]

sounds good - I missed not doing it this year........such a great event........

[bored girl]

i cannot do anything but second Minty on the awesomeness of the weekend

to the peeps in cottage 1 or was it 2 you ROCK!

to fandacious thanx for the lift

 

correction on the mechanical needs though........

i told you wed or thurs that i might need your mechanical skills to adjust my gears  the whole other stuff that happened afterwards wasn't planned

 

so fri was meeting time

some food and groceries shopping at 10:30 at night.......

and then the rain started......i was praying hard that it stops but dont think anyone was listening

so off to bed, not happy as now i was imagining what i'd look like the next day

 

1am wake up call from fanie..... with a light shining 30cm away from my face  dude, i was not happy with you......

 

sat.......race day

we get up get ready, ride down to the start where i left my new compadres

get to the start line at 7:15 or so, race starts at 8:30.......

now those of you that know me might start laughing i do not get to start lines on time

listened to 2 guys talk sh!t, and perv over an ibis mojo

off we go finally, my feet are now frozen.......

tar tar tar for like 5km

reach the first climb 2km long and i keep on making new friends

after we reached the off rd section i felt on top of the world

as Marius said in a previous post it wasnt technical so you could go pretty fast.....provided you removed all slow moving objects out the way

more friends......2 guys in bicycling kits (1 needed to pee badly apparently), the guys that import commencal, had a chat with the one oke on a meta 4 in the pearly white finish with the bright green........drool (oh MichH he said he knows you and wanted to know if you're happy with your bike)

there was some guy in a thule kit......didnt make friends with him  he seemed too upset cos me and commencal guy were talking sh*t and he had to overtake us. i let him but that woke up the  in me and i decided he is challenging me so i dropped him

1 big climb, people and kids EVERYWHERE

anyway no major excitement

i felt on top of the world

my tyres were great on the mud

my nose was not running (i know gross but it's a part of cycling )

i drank like a quarter of my bottle of water (after stressing that i wont have enough) and didnt stop at the water point

did a 2:53 at the end (or so winning time says )

some girl passed me 500m from the end and i had NOTHING left in me to catch her.......really annoying

 

so a good meal - thanx marius and lilo

a mechanic at hand - minty, what would i have done without you???

a night of uninterrupted sleep - thanx fanie

nutricious breakfast

and a pole position....

adds up to a great race

will def be there next yr but this time on the long one

 

sat night was supposed to be a booze night but sadly it ended with an early bed

and message in a bottle........who likes movies like that anyway???

 

sun we woke up early to see our room mates leave for the battle of the rd

only for marius to return 10min later with a slashed tyre.......not cool dude not cool

so the 3 of us (minty, marius and me) fetched sara and went to have some fun.......or frustration as i found out half way

i was real slow on the single track as my slippery roots skills arent that great

so half way my gears start their old tricks and im back to about 6 or 7 usable ones

beautiful view when we reached the table with benches

got back after some climbing and i was feeling like i had done some work

got back to the pretty house, packed and on our way

 

long long trip but so worth it

i got like 3 or 4 pics will post bit later

 

 

[mountain_lion]

OK, so the social did not happen and we misssed nothing. Maybe next time.

 

Mrs mountain_lion and I stayed in Plet with friends. On the way to

Knysna on Saturday morning there were a few drops of rain which made us

doubt if this was such a good idea...

 

Fortuneatly we did not chicken out.

 

 

 

We arrived at the start a bit later than intended due to having to turn

back to the cars when we realised that neither of us were wearing our

transponders...

 

Appart from that I had a wonderfull ride. I was not sure if I could

trust my distance measurement from the map (easy for the organisers to

add in some more single track), so decided to pace for 85km just in

case. As a result, I still felt reasonably strong at the finish.

 

I managed to stay on my bike for almost the entire route: There was the

tree in the single track of course and then a forced dismount on that

muddy section of grass near the finish - nothing serious. Even rode

that steep climb where we joined the 50km route!

 

 

 

I came in at 4:42 & mrs mountain_lion finished about an hour later. We both thoughly enjoyed the event.

 

I see willehond manged a 04:32 - should have met up with him; with a

bit of motivation I am sure I could have managed 10 minutes faster.

However I certainly would not have been able to match his 2nd place in

46km road race on Sunday; not even without doing the MTB the day

before.  Well done!

 

 

 

We would have loved to join the Harkerville ride on Sunday, but had to

go and say hello to grandma (96) in Mosselbay and be back in the office

today.

 

 

 

Any idea who the photographers were? I think there should be a nice one

of me jumping those little steps on the track next to the road near the

end.

 

 

 

It is a long way to go to Knysna, but I might just be tempted to do it again next year...

 

[bored girl]

noooooo

i;ve been good since i changed to spds......

although i did have a minor thumble on sun and parts of me will be rainbow coloured later this week

 

 

 

In the rush to hit the road home I never asked you what you thought of Sunday's ride...?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

ok so sun........

was great

i am sorry my skills arent up to scratch yet to have been able to keep up with you on the downhills though

the roots made it a bit tricky

the skipping gears made it even trickier

but i had a good ride and a good workout really love those hills it just calls to me

i did seem like a "pansie" on a few occasions though and i will regret it for the rest of my days

[MintSauce]

You rode well through that last section of ST where I rode behind you. It wasn't super technical, but you were going quite fast. Plus you seem to have good posture on the bike, meaning your position on the bike when descending and cornering.

You have plenty confidence and the technical ability will come over time so don't stress about it.

 

Sara and I both thought you rode very well.

[bored girl]

You rode well through that last section of ST where I rode behind you. It wasn't super technical' date=' but you were going quite fast. Plus you seem to have good posture on the bike, meaning your position on the bike when descending and cornering.

You have plenty confidence and the technical ability will come over time so don't stress about it.

 

Sara and I both thought you rode very well.

[/quote']

 

 ohhh

thanx guys

and i had to ride fast  you were on my @ss the whole time

[fandacious]

Elevation profile for anyone interested. As you can see... its JUST hills.. no flat anywhere...

 

 

[MichH]

Hey BG, did he sound French or South African? It was probably either Graham or Jean-Luc you rode with, both excellent people!

 

Sounds like a great time was had by all, better than me anyway, got flu!

[mountain_lion]

Anybody know if there are any photos online of the Knysna MTB?

 

mypicture.co.za lists the event, but does not seem to have any photos up (or is that just silly me??)

 

 

 

[fandacious]

Me' date=' BG and Antoinette (My other half) arrived around 6pm friday night. Had a carbo load supper @ panarottis (a little pasta, lots of beer). Saturday was pretty tame (seeing as the bokke lost).

Sunday:

The hill out of knysna was awesome. Seeing as I weigh nothing and the only thing I can do on a bike is climb hills, I opened up a gap of around 1:30 on all the unlicensed riders on my way up the hill. Of course you can't ride like this forever and it wasnt long before the first bunch caught me.

 

From there until the turn off at Wittedrif just after Plet, we motored as the wind was behind us and it was mostly downhill.

 

We stuck together until the main hill in wittedrif where a breakaway group of around 6 riders pulled an unsuspected attack and drop me & the rest of the group. It was one LONG hill against the wind up wittedrif. I picked up a super strong rider (he rode the 85km on Saturday) For about 40km it was just him and me. One by one we picked up the riders from the group that dropped us on Wittedrif. As we reached the top of the main hill into Knysna a big bunch of around 30 riders (Faniefiets was in this group) caught us and all hell broke loose during the downhill sprint into knysna. The road traffic was quite bad as well as the fun riders taking up the whole road. Its quite impressive seeing a bunch of around 40 riders sprinting downhill. Fanie finished 12th and I finished 15th.

 

Not the most enjoyable ride ever. No scenery and WAY too many insanely long hills. And the wind was blowing against us the whole way back.

 

All in all, the weekend was a blast.

 

I think next year I'm gonna do the MTB on Saturday and then have the promised party Saturday night!

[/quote']

 

*BUMP*

[PokerFace]

Willehond and myself did the 85km MTB race at a leisurly pace and had loads of fun. It's a beautiful route whic I will definitely do again next year. The Sunday we got up with concerns about the weather. the wind was not pleasant. It felt like a long time in the 46km starting blocks. Some young guys practised their sprinting from the timing mats to the start line. The start was fast for some riders. The two of us tried to get our sore protesting legs to get up to speed. The hill out of knysna was very painfull. Should have warmed up a bit more, especially after the previous day's MTB ride. 2 thirds up te hill we caught 2 guys. We formed a nice group to work at a fast pace with the wind behind us. At this point we had no idea how many riders we still had to catch. We caught some more scatterlings at the turn around. We were in the middle of a lot of slower long distance riders. Now we started the hard work into the wind. We found out that we had one rider 3 minutes ahead of us. We tried hard to get the group to pick up speed. Instead a lot of riders were already trying to attack and reduce the size of the chasing peloton. I gave it my best at the front (10 - 15km from end). After my hard work I was supprised with two attacks. The second was too much for me. Willehond managed to stay with the group. It was frustrating to see the group in front of me, but not feel strong enough to reel them in. I rode the rest of the race behind the group. I still saw them go for the sprint about 30 seconds before I finished after them. Willehond took the sprint. Well done Willehond!!!

[Lilo]

Did Willehond win something at prize giving??

[Willehond]

Did Willehond win something at prize giving??

 

Hey Lilo, I got to kiss a podium chick!!! (Well actually the Rotary club president nogal, not quite a chick, but a very friendly tannie!) and I got a R300 P'nP voucher and a nice shiny medal!

 

The sprint was for second cause the guy who won was long gone.  He TT'd all the way from the start!  VERY strong guy.  We were left to fight for second.  PokerFace worked really hard and nearly dropped me on the first horrible hill out of Knysna.  Luckily I hung on and found my legs somewhere near the turn.

 

Nice to get some prize money, but the best was sprinting for the line and taking it with a punch in the air!  GRRRRRREAT!!!!!

 

 

Willehond2007-07-12 14:37:47

[Willehond]

Anybody know if there are any photos online of the Knysna MTB?

mypicture.co.za lists the event' date=' but does not seem to have any photos up (or is that just silly me??)


[/quote']

 

Mountain_lion I saw the photo were put up earlier this evening.  Found 3 nice ones of me.  Go have a look.

 

I told you we were going to take it easy on the mtb!  You could have joined us easily as we cruised and had lots of fun.  Tried to keep our heart rates below 85%, but it was difficult! You just want to race.  Especially when you get passed by a guy on a single speed steel bike!!!  Had loads of fun on the route and it was stunning. Definitely doing it again.