nickcoyne.com

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)!

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!!

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.

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?

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!!

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!

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!

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!