Posts Tagged ‘specialized’
Sani2C Mountain bike race. (read: Sani to sea)
My bags are packed and I’m ready to go… my last day in Stellenbosch for 2009. Scary thought. I’m leaving for Durban in the morning for the start of the Sani2C mountain bike race.Its probably the most stage race I have done in South Africa. I did the Cape Epic in 2005 and 2006 with my mate Barry Pauw and I did the 2007 Sani2C with Down Hill ace Greg Minnaar.
Owwwww! Rated PG13 (VL) 2005.
And why I’m not racing Xterra Temecula coming Sunday(2005):
It all happened on a sunny afternoon about 6 weeks ago. As usual, I played my own little “carry all the groceries in one trip” game. A 15 kilogram bag of potatoes (Caveman staple diet) obscured my view of the trail leading up to my cave, but hey, being in familiar territory, I climbed the 3 steps leading up to my cave entrance blind…
The previous nights’ Warthog casserole must have been a bit off, which in turn threw my stride pattern out, causing me to miss the first step. Almost. Actually, my big toe nail did make the step. The rest of my foot not. So the big toe nail had to carry the not-so-inconsiderable weight of not only one Caveman, but also about 30kilos in groceries! Lets just say the nail didn’t stand up to the task. But it did stand straight up in the air. For a moment I could see it pointing at the bright blue African sky, but only for a split second, as it was quickly obscured by large volumes of blood spurting from the hole where my big toe nail used to be.
So that was the lesser injury.
The real hurt happened when I fell with the bent knee of my other leg straight onto the sharp lip of the 3rd step. Lets just say it was #&$@! sore. I couldn’t assess the damage, as I was seeing stars, and the blood was flowing like a river. Think Amazon river. The dog loved it.
Eventually ran out of blood after 3 hour ride.
A short story about my training…
This I wrote for the 2002 Lifetime Fitness Triathlon brochure. They asked us to “talk trash”- a new experience to me, so I let loose and talked trash!
In my 15 years in triathlon I’ve learnt a few lessons:
One is: THE MORE GEAR YOU HAVE, THE FASTER YOU GO. Ok, I have TONS of gear. The newest, fastest, lightest, flashiest gear on the market. Hell, some of the stuff I ride can’t be found on the market. It is so high tech and secretive, I had to kill the engineers just to keep the secret.
Broken arm. Caveman solution to cast. 2005
Custom made #CavemanCast. Patent pending.
My 2005 off season reading was Lee McCormack & Brian Lopes’ book on mountain biking skills. As a fairly competent mountain biker, I was amazed at how much there is still to learn about the art of making an off road bicycle go fast.
Specialized tire testing camp in Stellenbosch
Burry Stander doing rolling resistance testing on the rollers. He rode at 25km/h and at 35km/h with about 20 different tires and measured the wattage needed to hold those speeds for each tire. On the right (reading the power tap numbers) is Benno Willeit, our Specialized mechanic, and on the left is Tire Specialist Frank Stacey.
