new hotness for 40euros

got an old n busted wheel that needs some new hotness? well a recent client of mine's 7400 series dura ace hub reached the end of its road but the campagnolo omega rim to which it was laced was still good as new. we wont ask how this happened, or how our (least) favourite bike shop in den haag came to have a huge overstock of 6500 series ultegra front hubs, we will just rebuild the wheel.



of the origional spokes, 6 didnt pass the quality control, another peculiar situation into which i refuse to delve further, but this situation was relatively quickly remedied with just 2 trips to the local bike shop, 5 spokes purchased the first trip saving the last spoke for the second trip. then it was out with the old n busted dura ace hub and in with the new ultegra hotness and a wheel is reborn. 15euros for the new hub, 20euros for the rebuild, 5 euros or so for the spokes and the chocolate bars fueling the many trips. another happy wheel...

bigger bragging rights

is what u get when u win a bigger championship, apparently... last year the beer drinking singlespeeders hijacked the sport class of a south african national championship, but this year we hijacked the sport class of the african continental championship! the venue was the same, up in the beautiful jonkershoek valley, but the results were slightly different: dobinson showed some mad beer drinking skills to avenge his second place at the former nationals with a commanding win at this year's continental champs, nice one!



i'd love to say that the fact that the beer stop was correctly situated in the feed/tech zone made the UCI officials happy, but it was more like they just couldnt immediately think of a reason to kick us off the course. anyway, it was in this beer zone that my most and least memorable moments of the race occurred. gavin and i pulled into the beer zone in second and first place respectively, quite proud of ourselves for the healthy gap we had built up over third place on the first few hills. we grabbed out beers and set about making short work of them. and then dobinson in third place arrived, and before we knew it he was on his way, beer finished, chuckling to himself, in the lead.



having my lack of beer drinking skills rubbed in my face was my least favourite moment, but it was followed almost immediately by a great piece of cornering. the same person responsible again as he sped away, watched by both gavin and i, forcing some swiss girls warming up for their race to scramble to get out of his way as he reentered the singletrack, dragging the back wheel and eventually drifting both wheels around a sharp hairpin bend. beer induced brilliance aside, all the shouting at him in the singletrack, and running with bike on shoulder learned from the recent cyclocross season wasnt enough to catch dobinson as he went on to take a well deserved win.



without the 30 or so singlespeed riders, the sport class would have had only 2 or 3 participants. in spite or perhaps because of the beer forfeits, graciously supplied by iride and williamsbikeshop, sport class was one of the biggest categories of the whole championship. thanks to chris for the photos. for now tho its back to the complex combination training required for singlespeed racing until world champs in ireland later in the year. who else is going?

lessons from the 24hr race

in keeping with the theme of setting realistic goals, i set out to do at least 20 laps of the 9km course out at oak valley. i'd love to say that this target was calculated scientifically or something, but really it came about when i overheard my friend gavin (veteran of three 24hr solo world championships) telling another friend, dave (over beers) that i wouldn't do more than 20 laps. taking the beers out of it tho, i think gavin knows pretty well what the limiting factors are in solo 24hr racing, and we have raced together enough times for him to know my athletic ability pretty well too, so more than just proving him wrong, i figure it was a realistic goal :-P

leaving cape town early saturday morning with the jet lagged canadian avenger and my dad, in full race support mode, we noticed that it was gonna be a scorcher out in grabouw. luckily deon, who was racing in a social team of 7 had already arrived to secure a camping spot while we were still sleeping that morning, so we had a good spot. and then it started. the heat that is. man it was hot. when the race finally started, i was pouring a whole water bottle over myself in the start-finish-straight each lap and i was dry before the 25minute or so lap was over. the photo above shows the scenery in the late afternoon, nice 'ey? by then i had knocked out about 10 laps, narrowly avoided heatstroke, and was just getting worried about the twinges of cramp in my legs. the big climb in the first half of the lap was becoming quite an effort to get up on a singlespeed.

the twinges were short lived however. i stopped drinking energy drink just for a moment, and had a packet of chips and a sandwich, and soon it was all good again. supper came and went, the lights went on, and i finally decided to take a nap on the 17 lap mark around midnight. at this point i had been made aware of one of those limiting factors i mentioned earlier. the sore bum factor. in retrospect i think this was the major factor in gavin's estimation of my maximum lap capabilities. after around 150km of offroad riding, it just happens. not a lot u can do about it apparently. i tried showering, sleeping, and a change of lycra, and even this didnt help much. the shot above was taken at dawn and i think this just might have been my 20th lap.

in the end i pushed through to do 25 laps. the winning man did 38 laps and the winning lady did 35 laps, which was good enough for 2nd place overall! i ended up in 10th place overall out of around 80 solo competitors, and 2nd place in the (unofficial) singlespeed category. although i think there were only 3 of us riding singlespeed and solo. overall it was a good experience, i am happy to have surpassed my own expectations and those of others. i couldn't have done it without my support crew, thanks to my mom, dad, the canadian avenger and friends who helped out when my brake needed fixing, and to olympic cycles for the lights and gazebo. i'll call you all again next time. no idea when that will be ;-)