A nice fun event this one… Day 1 is a 24km time-trial, on a not completely flat course, day 2 is an 80km road race.

24kms is a bit short for a training day, so I rode to the start and back. Not being a time-triallist (by a long shot), and not having done a TT for about 12 years, I wasn’t expecting too much. I managed to get a good steady effort going and came in 4th, a long way behind Robby, but only 1:10 off Francois, which I didn’t think was too bad! Unfortunately not much other competition - none of the Virgin Active guys were here.

The road race was a lot of fun. We had 5 BikeMax team members, and no other teams present, the only real competitors being Brian Ireland and Robbie Setton, and they were rather outnumbered. So we set a steady hard tempo from the start to shed all of the wannabes, ending up with a group of about 10. Coming back over the Paardeberg rollers I started putting in some attacks. Brian was watching Francois (who was just ahead of him in the points), so off I went, to be joined by Robby (thank God! I wouldn’t have managed on my own!). And we rode alone for the next 40 minutes to finish with 6 minutes on the bunch. Robby did at least 3/4s of the work and my legs were pretty poked by the end of it. Just to make sure that I got the necessary points, Robby set me up for the win.

Which meant that Robby got 1st for VWCA champs, I got 2nd, and Francois beat Brian in the sprint for 3rd, so he got 3rd overall. BikeMax 1-2-3! Admittedly against not a full complement of opposition, but we’ll take any glory we can get !

Thanks to Attie and the rest of the VWCA team for putting on a great series and a great finale.

The first league funride of the season, and the first time we’d be starting in the elite bunch. Would we be able to hang on??

I got myself to the front of the bunch early since the climb starts only 2k’s from the start. Unfortunately the pace was a little too hot for what I had in my legs this morning. I went over the top in what became the 2nd bunch on the road. There wasn’t a great deal of effective working together though, and it was clear that we weren’t going to catch the guys up the road. I settled into an easy rhythm and we ascended Red Hill for the 2nd time at a very moderate tempo. Until some fuckwit (who isn’t riding the funride) decides to join our bunch, and then stop dead in front of me. Nick brakes quickly but falls over as he can’t avoid the back wheel of the aforementioned moron.

I was hardly moving forward at all as I fell, so there was more bruising than roasties, but my left shoe got a nasty graze, and my previously pristine STIs got scratched. Not knowing whether I’d done any proper damage to knees or anything, and feeling rather tender on the one knee, I thought I’d call it a day and cruise back to the start. A rather inauspicious start to the league season

Funride season kicked off with a tandem league event in Worcester. I joined Uwe on his very nice Cannondale tandem. Unfortunately we lost Peter & Robby, and another team, on the first (and only) climb.

That left it to us and 2 other tandems to do this chasing, with one wheelsucker for company. We did our turns and then gave it gas at the last turn about 800m out, and got away for 3rd place. Not bad for the first time riding together! I’ll have to give this tandem thing another go!

Since the Tour d’Eden was cancelled and everyone had made plans to get off work, we decided that we’d head up to George anyway, and put in a 5-day training camp.

Most of the team went up, and Russell drove the backup vehicle. We got in 5 days of fairly high-intensity riding, including one day where we went over Outeniqua Pass 3 times I love hills!!!

Feeling a bit knackered on my return ‘cos we not only exercised our legs, but also our livers. There wasn’t an evening without a few glasses of wine, and on the last evening there were more than a few glasses!

Check out the pics!