Capestorm Rogaine

The concept: you get a map with points marked on it, more difficult points has higher values. Collect as high a score as possible within the allocated time.

Saturday was the 6-hour foot rogaine. Cindy is a brilliant navigator, and she just ran straight to the controls every time.




The 5 hour mountain bike rogaine the next day was a different story: I'm known for the proportions of my navigational errors, and Dawn hasn't done this before. I used everything Cindy explained to me the next day, and between Dawn and myself we managed to find the controls with only minor detours - AND had lost of fun along the way - there's some very good cycling at Lakenvlei! (and some mud, depending on route choices)



Lovely spot prizes from Capestorm, which includes a very green marathon t-shirt that i'll be using a lot to cycle with!

work gets in the way

With the launch of a new product at work, I had to choose very carefully how I wanted to spend the very limited amount of free time available: cycling or blogging.

Naturally, i chose cycling.

Being a corporate firefighter, work will always interfere with training and playing schedules. So how to train for an upcoming 24-hours, or a JoBerg2C, or a possible cycle tour to Everest base camp, and still keep the clients happy - so that you'll be able to afford the adventures?

Some of my solutions:

Commute
Cycle to work.
Nobody loves traffic. So use that traffic time, that's wasted anyway, to cycle to work and back. There might be great off-road-possibilities between home and work, and you arrive at work in a good mood. Add detours if the distance is too short. It also is a good excuse to buy (and test) some decent lights for the bike (you need it for the 24 hours anyway)

Run after work while it's still light
So, you have to stay at work till long after it's safe to cycle through Delta Park all on your own.
Pack your running kit in, and go run in the late afternoon for an hour. Running is good for ... something ... Feel the freedom of running with a huge grin while everybody else is stuck in peak-hour traffic. Leave the ipod at home - use the running-time to think of nothing - and arrive back at work with fresh new ideas on how to tackle the problem that you were stuck on just before the run. Use running-days to stock up on hours at work, so that you have negotiating power for when you want to leave early the next day to go on your nightride.

Daylight savings: Cycle in the Dark
Being a mountain biker, i try to limit running to only those days when there's nothing else to lift my endorphins ... you need a car at work for various reasons (a trip to the bike shop during lunchtime for a new bottom bracket, for example) - so you can't commute. Enters night rides.
You bought the new lights for the commute anyway - might as well then go use it somewhere.
- The MTN bikepark is open on Tuesday nights till 8. Arrive at work early (or use credits built up during running-days) and leave early. Enough time for a few laps in daulight, and then put on lights for some night-fun. At night there are no wizz-kids pointing and laughing at you on the BMX-track, and nightriding helps a lot with skills (you're on the obstacle before you saw it ... nothing you can do, so just ride it)
- There's also the Dark & Dirty crowd that leaves on 19:00 on Thursday evenings from the Irene mall. This is arguably Gauteng's coolest crowd, and you will go home late, dirty and happy. Traffic from Jo-burg to Pretoria made it impossible for me to attend those rides, but as soon as the workload lightens, i will go that way again to fill up with endorphins. I will not, however, give up the commuting, night-riding in the bikepark, and running :)

oh, and get a rain jacket.

adventure sprinting

When AdventureLisa phoned me to ask if i'd join their team for the kinetic sprint, I knew i was in trouble - both lisa and debbie are very strong runners, and i've been concentrating on cycling for a while. oh well, do it anyway!

There were 2 running legs, 2 cycling legs & an obstacle course. We could do it in any order, but not 2 cycling legs after another. We started with a short rogaine-style run through the centre, followed by a very pleasant cycle on some dirt-roads in the area. The next run-leg was urban-styl in a gym! Lisa ran 1 kay on a treadmill, I cycled 1 kay on a spinb-bicycle, and debbie paddled away on a rowing machine. was great to cheer my buddies (and members of competition teams) on while waiting for my own turn. The last cycle was quick and lovely with some singletrack thrown in. Lisa's a brilliant navigator, so finding the controls was a given :)

here's a picture of us afterwards - yes, that's us on the top of the podium!

Newbies graduating to true mountain bikers

A new standard for Newbie Mountain bikers was set on Saturday when a few Mountainbike-newbies set out on a 94.7 training ride on their mountain bikes.

The main aim of ride, a joined venture between Cartrack and Momentum, was to introduce newbies to the thrills of mountain biking.

'I wanted to learn how to ride a bicycle', explained Vivek Bhimma, 'but then I allowed myself to get talked into riding the 94.7.

Bhimma was one of the riders who set off from Emmarentia dam early on Saturday morning. The ride started out with very unstable wobbly bicycles, but by the time they came back, they were negotiating roots, rocks, narrow bridges and gnarly drops like it wasn’t even there.

When they reached Republic Hill, a mountain known to have reduced hardcore mountain bikers to tears, they insisted on cycling all the way to the top. The mystery of why everyone wanted to go up, was soon revealed: It seemed like the newbie-riders were all undercover-downhill-riders. ‘That was fun’, Noleen Erlank explained as she reached the bottom of the hill with a silly grin.

The group later insisted on cycling up Delta Park Hill as well, just so that they could come down again. The customary coffee-break later in the day was also cut short so that the riders could go play again, this time through the botanical gardens.

‘I will be back’, Bhimma declared after the ride.

The next training ride will be on Wednesday 2 September at Kyalami.


In the picture: Karen de Vries demonstrating that she would be able to take a gap in a big bunch of cyclists with perfect aim on the bridge.