[10 Apr 05] Day 1 of the race was grotty. The first half-and-a-half went great and we were lying in the top 25. Then I had a small crash that took about 20 minutes to recover from. Except I never really recovered and felt horrible for the rest of the day and we came in only 44th position. I was hoping that day 1 was an anomaly and day 2 would go better, however I went through the same thing during day 2, except worse. I grovelled through the latter half of the race - I've never felt so lousy on a bike. My legs were tight, knees were sore and even my ankle was sore.
Strategy for day 3 was to take it easy and allow my body to get over whatever was afflicting it. But my ankle felt worse and worse and my legs felt like big lumps of lead. The final water point was only 2kms from the race village at Riversdale before it went out on a final loop of 20kms. I decided that the direct route home would be kinder to my body and pulled out.
Nicole came to fetch me in Riversdale the following day, and I sat waiting on my own at the Riversdale high school feeling very sorry for myself. All of this training and preparation, just to ride 3 days. Not what I'd planned, and nothing I could do about it.
Kevin paired up with a new partner for stage 4, but Lady Luck was also to get the better of him as he had a whole night without sleep and then got sick in the morning. He pulled out at the first water stop of stage 4 feeling very weak. Luckily though he recovered during the course of the day and was able to start stage 5 and finish all the subsequent stages.
Right now neither of us are feeling very much like we'd like to do Epic '06. A change of scenery is needed - maybe our next stage race challenge will take us to TransAlps or TransRockies. We'll see next year.
Have a look at our race pics.
[19 Mar 05] Picked up my Zen yesterday, spent a little while pumping and poking to get the suspension set up, and hit the trails for the first time today. I have been converted. I am now a reborn full-susser. Hallelujah!! Dropped almost a minute off our standard lap time, all thanks to a quicker descent with the oh-so-comfy 4 inches of 5th Element Air travel.
[14 Mar 05] Dumped my bike with the friendly guys at Bike Hut for an extreme makeover. When I get her back she should look like a Mountain Cycle Zen, with Manitou Skareb Platinum fork.
Kevin should be taking delivery of his Litespeed Sewanee tomorrow too, so we'll both be fully suspended.
[1 Dec 04] Just had a great weekend up in Grabouw doing laps of the Lebanon forest. Cobus Pienaar put together another great weekend that included lots of riding, as well as a skills workshop and nutrition lectures. It was great to meet some of our fellow Epic competitors too, and I have to say that we look a bit fitter than some of them ;) - there's still a long way to go though. Also interesting was the fact that Kevin and I were the only of 3 people out of the 20 present, still on hardtails. One day we'll upgrade (note to self: win lotto)!
[28 Oct 04] Training has slowly kicked in. I rode the recent sub-Vets Tour, which was enough to discover that the fitness has a long way to go. I bailed on day 2 as I was seriously damaged by long stretches of guttering. So now its a focus on slowly building up mileage, and then we can hit the high intensity stuff, probably only starting with that in December. April '05 is a long way away though, so we're just taking it steady.
[21 Sep 04] We're in!!! We've secured an entry for '05, and its all systems go! We'll be racing in the colours of Alcolin Bostik again, and its time to get our training kickstarted. Early reports of the route indicate a lot more singletrack and proper mountain biking, and a lot less long gravel road sections. Also the distance looks to be a bit further. We are not afraid!!
[15 Jun 04] I have come to the slow realisation that I'm never going to get that race report out... just too much shit happening work-wise, so no time to do it. And by now I can't remember half of it anyways (they say the mind is the first thing to go :)). Not sure what's happening with the official race photos - the Cape Epic crew are really quiet about it.
[14 Jun 04] Guess we're a bit slow at the keyboard, 'cos the '05 entries came and went in 5 hours. So at this point we are not competitors for next year. Feeling rather depressed about this :( on the one hand, and mildly relieved on the other hand knowing that I haven't spent over R5000 entering, and am not about to incur thousands more in costs to get me and my bike ready again. But mostly rather depressed. Oh well, maybe we get in as a late substitute?
[31 Mar 04] I finally uploaded our race photos from Nicole and Wendy's cameras. We should get some really awesome ones when the official race photos become available too. What we saw at the end of stage presentations was of the highest quality. And yes, that race report is coming... be patient!!
[8 Mar 04] The Cape Epic 2004 has come and gone! What an unbelievable experience. We covered some 785km in 8 days through all imaginable weather conditions and through terrain ranging from tarmac to rutted dirt roads, to mud and singletrack.
Despite Kevin suffering from quite a bad chest-cold for the last 2 days, we managed to come home in 33rd position overall. Not bad for two part-timers :) - total time 37 hours 56 minutes and 33 seconds.
The entire race organisation was absolutely superb and the whole Cape Epic team deserve a huge hand for putting on a fantastic show.
A race report will be coming soon. Watch this space!
[23 Feb 04] Well, the moment of truth is here soon. The ride kicks off this Saturday the 28th of Feb. We'll soon find out if we've done enough training. I suspect that we'll be found wanting - I don't know that its possible to properly prepare for 780km offroad over 8 days whilst dealing with all of life's normal responsibilities and distractions.
So, I guess we'll take it slow to start and see how it goes!
[9 Feb 04] So there I was... just riding along minding my own business at the end of the Rollercoaster funride on Sunday, when some little moron from the senior scholar's bunch decides that he is going to sprint THROUGH me. Going around me was obviously too much effort for him. End result - Nick heads towards the ground very quickly, splitting my helmet open (yip - they do work!!), giving me elegant roasties down the whole side of my body, damaging my STIs and handlebars and putting nasty scratches on my saddle and right shoe.
I was obviously tempting fate though. Just a few days ago I was remarking about how long it had been since I'd had a "proper" crash. Well, no more waiting. Luckily no broken bones and hopefully I'll be back on the bike in a day or two.
[8 Jan 04] Only 8 weeks to go... serious training kicks into action! Just got another set of wheels for the MTB so I can ride MTB on the road as well without having to mess around changing knobblies and slicks.
And a nice new helmet too - MET 5th Element - lots of big holes in the front to let the breeze through. I'm probably going to have to put suncream on top of my head now though!
[2 Dec 03] Just come back from an awesome weekend's riding in Grabouw with a bunch of fellow Epic entrants. Well organised by Cobus and Doug, we had everything - excellent riding, good food, good weather, comfortable accomodation and a big lake. Wish I could do this every weekend!! Read about it.
Just in! - a ride report from Andre du Plessis. Looks like he was paying more attention to the scenery than I was. Must have been the sweat streaming through my eyes!
[25 Nov 03] I did this with my Vineyard team-mates. We combined the elite team and the sub-vets team, which meant that us old blokes got towed along nicely by the strong young guys. A fantastic race apart from the onset of ITBS at about the 70km mark, which meant that I couldn't stand out the saddle for the next 130km, resulting in my losing my team-mates on the final climb. They finished in 6:05 and I came in 15 minutes later. 6:05 got our team 5th place! Cool :) - definitely aiming for a top 3 next year!
[27 Oct 03] A 150km drive to this little dorp up in the mountains at the Southern end of the Cederberg. Day 1 was miserable with high winds, lots of rain and freezing cold. We did manage to sneak a 2hour ride in during a break in the weather was was a relief. The rest of the day was spend at the exciting (not!!) Op-die-berg Fees.
Sunday brought better luck. Clear skies, 30degrees+, lovely!! We headed north in to the Cederberg for 50km before stopping for lunch by the river, then turning for the trip home. A nice hard 100km in the saddle.