grinning and bearing it barely

today was my first day back on the road bike since that road race almost 2 months ago. it has take that long to recover from the physical injuries (ribs just never seem to heal) but perhaps the time out has not helped with the emotional ones. my excuse at least has been that front end of the bike needed to be rebuilt almost completely. a very kind mr jan van dalen (the maker of my frame) at duell was able to straighten out a twisted fork, and i was able to rescue a front wheel in which one of the spokes managed to rip itself out of the dura ace hub. what was a 36 hole hub became a 35 hole hub and was sneakily rebuilt into an 18 spoke crows foot wheel. all it took was a bit of research and 6 new spokes

its enough to say that the first race of the new season was unsuccessful. all the preparations, nerves, sweat and meticulous colour scheming ended up in a pile of tattered lycra when a nice big group of us decided to throw our bikes on the ground at about 50km/hr after not much more than 10kms. throwing bikes on the ground is childish you say? i agree... but its as good an excuse as any to rebuild bikes, reformulate ambitions, and now well i guess to just generally spend more time in the saddle. my ride today consisted of taking keelie her office keys which she forgot at home, and making a nice loop of it by stopping at my favourite falafel bar on the way home. king falafel to the rescue

road racing

is always something that has fascinated and intimidated me. racing mountain bikes is awesome, fun, I love it... but for so many reasons, not the least of which being that there are no mountains in this country, I decided it was time to learn how to race a road bike. this started a while back when I joined hsk trias here in den haag, did a couple of club criterium rides, with mixed results, and then almost took my eye off the road racing ball while playing in some cyclocross mud. but in cyclocross races as in mountain biking, there seem to be many people who get their fitness from the road, and I wanted some of this.



even tho I had read stories of unknown (soon to be famous) racers winning road races on a cyclocross bike, everyone seemed intent on talking me out of attempting proper road races like this, so the quest began... the pile of parts in the corner waiting to be a road bike basically consisted of a brooks titanium swift saddle and some matching leather bar tape, oh and a set of tubular wheels with dura ace hubs. trawling the classifieds yielded an affordable SRAM force groupset and a fortuitous sequence of events resulted in a classic pink racing frame all but appearing in my living room. so far so good as everyone knows that pink bikes go faster.



i slapped the bike together, did a couple of training rides and even made it to a little club race out in gouda (40km solo into a headwind on a sunday morning just to get there, hence i didnt feel it warranted a blog post) just to make sure that i hadnt put the tires on inside out or something. and the pink duell flies, steel is real and all that. there is more than just a hint of satisfaction evident in the photo above as team 'amateurs without ambition' comprised of richard, selmar and myself heads off to my first and our first proper road race together. stay tuned

sunshine alleycat

i remember it as one of the first days of summer here, even though spring only officially started a couple weeks earlier. there i was just sitting around in scheveningen when i got a little facebook message from guilio checking if i was coming thru to amsterdam for the alleycat. what alleycat? the second in the series being organised by pristine. seemed like a good excuse to go show of my new pink bike with all its shiny brooks and sram bits in the sunshine so i set off.



the good thing about promising prizes is that people show up. add sunshine into the mix and everyone is having a good time. so, bring on the alleycat. the rules were simple, we were put into teams of six, you had to finish together, and you had to have all the answers, correct. as luck would have it, i ended up in a team with pierski and jur, and 3 other amsterdam locals. there were 6 checkpoints and 6 of us in each team. seemed logical that we each take a checkpoint, and meet on the park bench down the road from the finish.



as it turned out, we were the only team to split up, and we finished the alleycat in 37minutes. 2nd place arrived in some time over an hour. to the other teams' credit, there wasnt too much complaining. i guess it was a nice sunny day for a social group ride. anyway, we won! here is me holding up some of the aforementioned prizes :-) thanks to mirandawrites10 for the photos

track fix

its been a while since my last visit to the track, but i think im still addicted. thanks to anke and the other organisers of the track clinic, i think there might well be a few more addicts out there now too. my bike got a little spring clean (actually this is a euphemism, i had almost forgotted i had pink hubs under all that dirt), the track bars went on, a nice big gear appeared from the spares box, and some faster looking pedals took the place of the hard working guys.



just cleaning my bike would have been a well spent saturday morning, but there was still the road trip, the sugar fest, the track buzz and the warm fuzzy feeling to come. thanks to akos for being the only one of us responsible enough to own a car, thanks to keelie for being the only one of us irresponsible enough to buy sooo much sugar, and to the track, well, thanks for being there. pity they dont keep the amsterdam track open thru the summer as now im working there a couple days a week... anyway, i was so inspired by saturdays activites, that this is what i woke up to on sunday morning :-)

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 ;-)

who needs more than a pair of velskoene and a coffee pot?

when all youre planning to do is ride your mountain bike around in circles for 24hrs... in the legend, there was this afrikaans guy with an old beater of a mountain bike, his coffee pot as his support crew, and his velskoene - shoes that are as dear to the afrikaans as clogs are to the dutch. and if i remember correctly, he took on the lycra clad, spare bike wielding masses and beat all but one. my attempt to plan like the guy in the legend went up in smoke with all the help i got from olympic cycles, and the canadian avenger flew in this morning with some fresh heckling just for the occasion.

against what im sure is perfectly good advice, i am only taking one gear with me - 32x16. one speed steel frame hardtails just never seem to get old. the course out at oak valley is rumoured to be relatively flat, and the weather is certain to be more than just relatively warm. 4 of my mates are entering a singlespeed team, and last i heard planning to stick it to just about everyone, and another 7 of my mates are entering a 'social' team. who knows what they plan to do with all their spare time

anyway, the bags are packed, lights (thanks again to olympic who still help me out whenever i need stuff for a race on my summer holidays) are charged, bottles are filled. early start tomorrow, so its time to sign off. 12noon saturday till 12noon sunday. cant wait - 24hrs of oak valley :-)

the harder you try

the luckier you get. or so i have been told. i guess i wasnt trying hard enough then :-P either that or i can say that with all this bad luck, i should have a long lucky career in cyclocross ahead of me! the race in rotterdam ended 20mins in with a broken derailleur and dropout. the third time this season! its tempting to blame the refurbished derailleur and thus my own workmanship for this, but said derailleur functioned perfectly for a full 50mins last weekend under arguably worse conditions. anyway, such is this muddy life. 5th place in this race, and overall, slips through my muddy, thermal glove covered fingers, and i have to settle for a DNF and 7th in the championship.



on the bright side, 7th place is still in the prize money, and while it wont replace my rear derailleur, i win just enough to buy a new dropout for the kinesis, plus one as a spare. im not going to cry (for long) over how if i hadnt missed 3 races, and the 15points you get just for starting, and if i had had spare bikes at the races like the pros (and some of the guys i raced against), i would have finished a few places higher up in the overall rankings. the milk is spilt.



tears would be shed mostly happily anyway. this was my first cyclocross season, steep learning curve and all that, and while i lost 5th at the last race due to a mechanical, i still achieved my goal of a top ten position overall. looks like i also need a new chain! thanks to sven for this photo. and to the canadian avenger and friends who turned up or supported online, you guys rock, much love to you all! so now its time for a little (sunshine) break before training for the road season starts, proper. amateur racing license has arrived, there is a new bike in the pipeline, more details will appear as things are confirmed. cheers

national on home turf

there is still mud on my bike. no bike cleaning facilities at the race on Sunday added insult to injury, as I was forced to pull out of the race probably by some of this very same mud. I came round the corner to see one of the guys I normally race against looking at his derailleur perched unnaturally above his cassette. he forced a smile and warned me that it was muddy, yeah cheers, and 2 pedal strokes later my derailleur found the same position. now I'm not sure if it was the riders talking or the bikes crunching (crunch. crunch crunch? crunch crunch!!) to each other, but this started some kind of chain reaction as about 6 of the 10 riders around me suffered the same fate, at exactly the same spot



up until this point, it was good racing. somewhere between 50 and 60 people on the start line and I was riding in around 25th place at the time of the muddy derailleur death. good to see that the level of the national races is not hugely different from the level of the weekly provincial races, this bodes well for next season. anyway I think I put my dura ace derailleur back together, using some parts salvaged from the old 105 derailleur which died earlier in the season. only problem now is, the drop out of my frame is broken. this shouldn't have been a problem, as last week i ordered a new frame to replace the cracked schwinn, but it hasnt arrived yet. so while i wait and hope it arrives, i am choosing ratios for Saturday's races if it comes to it that I have to do it singlespeed.



thanks to the canadian avenger for the video, and willem jan, who has come to 2 races and witnessed 2 mechanicals, coincidence..? saturday's race is in berkel, riding distance away, looking forward to it, gears or no gears!