Take the A Train

You might be wondering what pictures of a train are doing on a cycling blog, and I have to confess the reason is a little tenuous. The last few days have been spent on practically every form of transport except a bicycle, starting with a flight up to Victoria Falls, and concluding with a train journey back to Johannesburg on the Rovos Rail, shown in these pictures. The owners bill this the Most Luxurious Train Journey In The World, and after three days and two nights of pampering I would concede it's not merely marketing hype. It really is (or was for us) a faultlessly indulgent experience. An equally tenuous reason for including pictures of what has kept me from riding is my Dad. I've mentioned before how his stories have been an inspiration to my cycling, and trains were another of Dad's great passions.

As wonderful as the break was, it's also something of a worry at such a pivotal time in the leadup to this year's Cape Argus. The previous weekend I made an impulsive entry to the Medallion Tour de Stellenbosch. I'd never done this race before, and even though it wasn't in my original plan it seemed like a good way to get a few more race kilometres under the wheels before the big day. Unfortunately, for the second event in a row, my pacing was hopeless and I failed again to temper the early enthusiasm. Racing too hard to stay with a bunch well above my level, the result was predictably similar to the 99er - I suffered a serious bonk around the 35km mark, and slowed considerably over the next 40km or so. The difference with this race was the 35C heat. Although I did manage to recover some pace back in the last quarter, my finishing time of 3:26 was around 15 minutes slower than I had a realistic hope of achieving.

It was only looking at the ride stats later on Strava that I was able to gain some perspective. With an average pace of 28km/h, it had actually been my second fastest race to date. Looking at the stretch from Paarl past Fairview winery and up to the R44, I could also see my error. That section of road is a much more significant vertical ascent than it appears when riding, and sticking with and even leading bunches averaging more than 30km/h along that lane was a far higher pace than I could have hoped to sustain. The rolling hills which follow that part of the ride were the sucker punch - sapping the remaining energy from legs and breaking the spirit. Another lesson learned - check the route profile of any new ride before the event!

Having rationalised the disappointment, I headed out for the regular club ride on the following Wednesday feeling upbeat again. I was rewarded with one of my strongest training 100km to date, finishing the last couple of hills at pace and feeling loose. In some ways it was a perfect place to pause for our vacation, but in others I just didn't want to leave off training and risk falling back in fitness and speed. Whether, in fact, it'll have any effect on my Argus in a week's time is of course impossible to judge. What seems now like an untimely break may in fact have been an ideal taper to let muscles and body recover before the last few loosening spins leading up to the ride. 

I guess whatever happens on Argus day, I'll probably have a nagging thought that maybe I could have gone a few minutes faster without a break in training. There are a couple of overriding thoughts to help me put that doubt aside. Firstly, these last months of riding have never been about a fast Argus time - being in good shape for that is merely a welcome side effect of needing to step up my training distances to prepare for LEL. The second thought also revolves around LEL - at times the commitment to my training has been just as hard on Yoli as me. Some quality R&R time together was a perfect way to recharge before heading into the final three or four months of long preparation rides.


Rovos Rail train photos by Yolandi Boshoff
Medallion photo courtesy of Wannabees club page.

A lovey summer day at the races

It was great to receive a good seeding for this year's 99er, even if it did mean an even earlier alarm call than usual, together with the chance of finding myself outclassed in too-fast a group in what is already a very difficult race to judge your pacing.  The forecast was for rain mid-morning, so it was something of a shock to feel the first drops falling as I kitted up and wheeled the bike through the car park towards the start. By the time the group H chute was loaded a moody grey dawn was just breaking, and the slight drizzle had settled into solid sheets of rain. There was some comfort in seeing friendly Wannabee faces - Hendrik a couple of rows across in the group F chute, and Estea and Tom also in group H with me. Nice as it was to see them, it also underlined the worry about being seeded too high - both of them being faster riders than me.

A few minutes later and we were on our way, the smooth wet tarmac jetting streams of spray off the wheels of every bike in the bunch ahead. The first few sharp left and right turns were very nervy - one wheel carelessly placed on a road marking or manhole cover through the turn would not only bring your own bike down but also all of the thirty or more riders behind. As the pace of the bunch picked up to 35km/h and above, there was little left to do but concentrate, steel your nerves, and stick with the bunch.

The crossroads with the R304 came up quickly, and once over the first of the rollers started. The pace was fast, and the bunch starting to break up. Ahead I could see a small group of maybe 10 or so riders had opened a sizeable gap, or maybe it was some stragglers that had already been shelled from the G group ahead. In the middle I could see Tom riding solo in a bid to bridge to the gap - he was looking strong, and I'm sure over the next few kilometers he reached and possibly passed them.  For myself, the early pace was starting to tell already. With barely 30km on the clock I could feel a tightening cramp in my inner thighs. Despite numerous calls of SHUT UP LEGS, I was slowly getting dropped from the small group of eight or so riders at the head of our bunch. I wasn't alone though, and many small sub groups with a handful of riders gradually got stretched out along the last couple of kilometres before we swung left onto the R44.

With around 35km on the clock, I knew I'd pushed too hard too soon. I was soaking wet, the rain was harder than ever, I was battling an evil cross wind solo, and my legs were trashed. I came very close to quitting right there. The only thought which stopped me was realising that all I would achieve is swapping sitting on a bike in the rain, with standing by the road in the rain, with the added misery of giving up. So I pedalled on. What was a little strange, and rather encouraging too, was the few times I did look down at my Garmin, my average speed was between 25 and 35km/h, even with the rain, the wind, and the rolling hills. I began to wonder if it was an error - those kinds of speed are faster than I'd normally ride on a good day, so it seemed very odd to see them after backing off the pace to recover my legs.

One, or perhaps two more bunches came past on the long hard section from Voor Paardeberg back to the R304. I have a feeling that unknowingly, I'd been giving them a tow too. My head was down and I hadn't looked around, but I'd definitely felt the presence of riders pacing behind me along that lonely stretch of wet and windswept road. Perhaps a kilometre or so before the junction, the groups that had passed seemed to coalesce, and we took the left turn and headed back to the Silos as one large bunch. The King of the Winds sign proved meaningless on the day, and the psychological lift from the unusually absent headwind was enormous. The bunch surged ahead, and a split immediately developed. Myself and a guy in an MTN Qhubeka  jersey jumped past the riders in front of us and into the gap, determined to bridge up to the group of riders breaking away. By now, my legs were loose again and we sprinted at full tilt, gradually eating away the distance to the group ahead. It took all of the 5km to the silos to reach them, and I don't think our speed dropped below 45km/h the whole way. It was a fantastic feeling to be flying along again, with the cramps and pains gone.

I realised just how much ground we had made up when I saw Estea on the rollers towards Van Schoorsdrift. She had passed me in the first bunch that had gone through after we turned off the R44. I don't think I've ever managed to bridge back up to someone who has passed me, let alone a rider who is faster than me. It was an enormous lift, and came at just the right time as energy levels began to flag from 80km of hard riding.
We passed each other a couple of times, and also road along together and chatted for a short section, before she finally pulled away as we battled the starting slopes of Vissershok. I'd love to have had the power to keep up, but by that stage my sole focus was staying on the bike and refusing to give in to the gradient that had beaten me in every previous year.

My initial goal of 3:30 was already gone - an unrealistic target really, having been based on my average speed on Die Burger, which is a much easier ride. Rather more worrying was the snail's pace I crawled up the fearsome slope ahead. I realised that I'd have to push hard to even make a sub 4 hour time. Cresting the top, I saw Hendrik again briefly - who proceeded to charge at the descent with far more bravery than I could muster. My approach was more measured, studying the shining slippery road for holes and bad surface sections. Even so, I still carried a decent speed down the slope, and was soon at the right turn into Odendaal Street. This is the 99ers real sting in the tail - a savagely steep final 1.2km to the finish line. You often hear talk of chewing on your stem in racing reports, but nowhere on any race in the cape is this line more apt. The cramp in my legs was severe. I thumped on the pedals, alternating standing and sitting until the top of the hill and the finishing mats crept into view. By some miracle, I'd managed to just scrape under 4 hours.

Finally managing to beat those last two climbs after three previous failed attempts was great, but oddly it didn't feel like I'd had a good ride. It's only in hindsight, looking at the ride stats, that I realised it was actually a pretty decent performance. Not only had I blown apart my previous best time for the ride, but according to Strava I had set an unprecedented 10 personal best times on segments of the ride. Not bad for a rainy Saturday at the races.


Due to the rain, very few photos have appeared. Headline photo courtesy of Wannabees website. Will update with additional photos if they become available.

Mixing up the training

 I was always under the impression that my problems getting going again in January were due to the dark and dim winter days in the UK. But there must be more to it than that, because despite the bright sunny summer days here in South Africa, I still find myself short of motivation and energy come the start of the New Year.

This year has been no exception - every ride has felt hard and left me somewhat battered at the end. And it's more than a little disheartening to feel yourself struggling at distances of 120km when in a few months time you need to be doing three times that distance several days in a row. So when I read the email from the folks at Sufferfest announcing their indoor virtual tour it immediately grabbed my attention. Not only might a change of training routine shake up my training and kick some life into my leaden new year legs, it would also see me putting some kilometers on my so-far underused Tacx Bushido indoor trainer and TrainerRoad account. Aside from that, it also sounded like fun - in a masochistic, "pedal myself into a soggy suffering pulp" kind of way.

Four stages down, and I have to say, I'm enjoying it immensely. The training videos are awesome, with kick ass sound tracks and very cool segments of cycle race videos to whip you into performing to the max. They're hard too - in some cases very hard. It doesn't hurt either that there are some very decent prizes in the draw for those who complete all nine stages, but the real prize I can already feel will be quicker legs. When out on the road, I tend to thump at the pedals with heavy gears and low cadence. Whilst this may actually be ok for a long endurance ride like LEL, it's not particularly good form for shorter faster rides and general riding. The indoor training videos are forcing me to a use cadences of 90, 100, and 110+ - which although painfully unfamiliar at first, I'm slowly starting to be able to maintain for longer and longer periods. As well as focusing me on my pedal stroke, I think there might be an increase in my Functional Threshold Power too - the level of power you can sustain for a 1 hour period. When I measured this towards the end of last year, it came in at a lowly 171 Watts, but it looks like I'm already achieving above this level in the power stats from the tour stage videos. All good practice for the last two races of the year over the next few weeks.

Sunday was probably the toughest day so far - since I had to find time and energy for the tour stage in addition to the usual club ride.  Given that the tour stage was a double header, with two videos back-to-back, it clearly wasn't going to be a good idea to try and do a 100km+ club ride too. So I decided to cut the ride short in Stellenbosch, and grab an opportunity to have a coffee with fellow LEL aspirant, Emmerentia Jacobs. The hour or so we chatted proved an informative and inspiring break from the normal Sunday pedal thumping routine. Whilst LEL may be a new ride to both of us, Emmerentia completed the previous PBP and had a wealth of tips and experience to share on the realities of long audax rides, and preparing for them. The nuggets of advice she shared were too numerous to list here, but one which resonated was the the idea of a weekend ride to Langebaan - an idea Yoli and I had also discussed as a way to get a long back to back training ride under the belt, combined with a family weekend on the beach at the same time.

Riding back from Stellenbosch, my LEL ambitions were rejuvenated. Feeling relaxed, I stopped stressing about struggling on recent rides and just enjoyed the few kilometres home at a nice steady pace, already looking forward to throwing myself at the next tour stage on the trainer that evening. A valuable lesson learnt on the benefits of mixing things up rather than going stale pounding the same routine. It's not done any harm to my training stats either, with January looking to be on track for 900km, a considerable uplift on my monthly averages of last year.

Testing, Testing

This week's rides have seen the first of what I suspect will become a regular occurrence over the coming months - testing the components and ideas I have for LEL bike setup to see if they work as needed. It's rather an odd convergence of my cycling passion with my day job, since that also involves testing, albeit there I'm creating tools to help other people do their testing.

Pictured right you'll see the Ortlieb 2.7L handlebar bag mounted on Jolly, with a Lezyne Super Drive XL and my 8 year old Garmin Etrex Vista C peeping out over the top of it, mounted on a Topeak bar extender. This represents the greater part of my planned handlebar setup, even though I hadn't intended to mount all of it quite so soon. I started out just wanting to see if my old Etrex suffered the "power off due to battery jitter" that I've read plagues many units. The Garmin bike mount would not fit direct on my bar though, which led me to mount the bar extender, and before long I realised I may just as well mount the whole lot to make sure it all fitted together.

Having mounted the Lezyne light, it made sense to leave earlier than usual so that the morning was still dark enough to tell whether the beam was bright enough and projected high enough over the Ortlieb bag to be usable. On LEL this will be my backup light, the primary light being a dynamo powered SON unit mounted on the fork crown and shining out under the bar bag. Testing that will wait for a future ride though, for now my main goal was to prove the backup would be effective if needed, and also get an idea on whether actual battery life was less than claimed. So on the rides today an Wednesday I've left at 5am to crank out a quick 18km extra distance ahead of the club ride start of 6am at Waterstone.  My concerns on the light immediately vanished - a tiny amount of beam gets clipped by the bag top, but what is left is plenty bright enough on both medium and high settings, and usable on it's lowest setting if the worst happens and I need to ride long hours on backup light alone.

The Etrex took a while to find satellites and start trip recording, but once it did the figures it logged matched exactly with my normal Edge 500. Both can be seen right in the top view of the layout. On LEL, the Edge will not be present, it's place on the stem will be taken up with a clip for printed instructions as backup to the GPS, should that fail. But for now, it stays there to see if I can rely on the Etrex.

At this stage, I can cut to the chase and say that after a 115km ride on Wednesday, and another 100km today, the Etrex has performed spot on. I've no idea if the jitter is something which develops over time, but for now it looks like the Etrex has been retrieved from the back of the spare gadgets cupboard and has a new role to play helping me on LEL.

Another thing that has been a pleasant surprise is that the setup doesn't seem to affect bike handling too badly. The weight of the front end is noticeably higher, which of course you start to feel on hills and as the rides get longer. It also makes the steering a little twitchy - a slight veer of the steering has a tendency to become a major swerve and you need to quickly correct it to avert disaster, especially when riding two up in group formation. But it didn't take long to get a feel for this, and by today's ride I wasn't wobbling around any more than usual. I'm sure the bar bag adds a bit of wind resistance too, but given LEL is not about racing speeds, I don't think this will matter much. I am glad I didn't go with the bigger 5L bag though, I reckon that could be a handful and not really worth it for the extra space.

So all in all, a decent first week of LEL preparation and testing. Physically and mentally though, I've probably been the weakest link these last two rides. Motivation to get out of bed and out the door has been lacking, and I've doubted myself towards the end of both rides. The energy sapping high temperatures haven't helped though, and nobody said training for a 1,400km ride would be easy!

The first of the logs below was direct from the Garmin, second was from the Edge 500, but could have also been from the Garmin if I hadn't wanted the heart rate data logged.



All photos by Rob Walker

Ride for Burry

It's been a bit of a battle getting back to blogging since the start of the year. I could blame being too busy with friends and family staying, getting back to work, getting back to cycling, or any number of other excuses. But they would be just that, excuses.

The real reason is pictured right - the memorial ride that our club joined in Stellenbosch last Sunday to mourn the tragic death of Burry Stander, knocked down and killed by a taxi driver whilst riding back from a training session on 3rd January. The cycling world and South Africa lost a true hero of the sport, and suffered the worst imaginable start to the new year. The lightest of breezes blew across the thousand or so riders gathered together on The Braak, with tributes spoken over the somehow fitting sound of bells from surrounding churches. I doubt a dry eye left that field for the short ride to lay flowers and mark Burry's passing at Jonkershoek gate. It's hard to find a more beautiful stretch of road  than those few kilometers along the valley rising up from Stellenbosch, or a worse reason for riding them. A solemn and painful reminder that when we get on our bikes to enjoy the sport we love, we are all Burry, or Carla Swart, or any of the too many victims killed on roads here and around the world - fragile and vulnerable, hoping that the drivers today will see us and give us room.

The start of 2013 has at least also included some happier personal moments too - top of the list being my son's fourth birthday, followed a day later by successfully securing an entry for LEL 2013. Yoli thought I was barking mad when I set the alarm to wake me at 3am on 5th Jan, and trudge bleary eyed to my PC to go online and book my place. My heart skipped a beat when I saw that the web site had opened two hours earlier than planned, but luckily there were still places available, and by 3:30am my payment was made and entry was confirmed. 

Despite Yoli's doubts over my sanity, I was glad I didn't just wait for Saturday morning - I've read since that by 7am, all of the places had sold out, despite the number of places being increased from 750 to 1000. Who would have figured that there are 1000 people in the world mad enough to consider entering such a ridiculously hard event, let alone get up in the small hours of the morning to make sure they didn't miss out. Sad to say, it seems that of the 13 or so other SA riders that I'd heard of expressing interest, only 2 others also managed to get in early enough to book their spot. Having swapped a few emails over the last few days, it does sound like there will be at least one or two local Western Cape cyclists interested in joining in on some long training rides. This last week has made us all even more painfully aware of the dangers of riding alone. With a need to start building up to 300km rides, and back-to-back training days, the risk increases proportionally with the amount of time spent on the road, especially the dark hours at either end of long riding days.

Which brings us back to where we started - in a field on a bright summer Sunday, mourning in Stellenbosch. None of us want to dwell too long on what might happen to us while out riding. None of us will forget Burry either.





All photos by Rob Walker