94.7 - and the rest... (98 km - 3h 30)
Cathy and I recently did our first ever road bike race in Johannesburg. It's known as the 94.7 after the frequency of the radio station that organizes it, and is supposed to be the same length in kilometers as the radio stations frequency is in kilohertz - except it never is. This year it was just under 98 km.
It is the second biggest timed bike race in the world (the biggest is in Cape Town) with 25-30000 entrants. As it was our first race we got a late start group and the temperature was in the 30's for most of the ride. Despite this we were still pretty chuffed with 3h30 and 4h54. This put us 4,262 nd and 12,012 th overall!
I don't have a photo of Cathy (that she would let me use), but to give you an idea here's a general picture of the start area with start groups going back as far as the eye can see.
Noon 2 Moon (63 km - 3h 42)
The next weekend we did the fantastically brilliant Noon 2 Moon 10 hour mountain bike race, which starts at noon (strangely enough) and finishes at 10 at night. It is a relay race with teams of three completing as many 7 km laps as possible around a course of jeep and single track twistier than a politicians excuse, including three hours of scary night riding.
All went well until two hours into the race when we got pounced on by a huge thunderstorm, leaving everyone to swim round the course with their bikes.
Paul's team came 10th and Cathy's all girl team came 3rd in their category and won a prize.
Paul having a dirty weekend.
Pilgrim's Rest (51 km - 4h 30)
I would have thought with the relative success of the previous races, that this race wouldn't have been too much of an issue, How wrong can you be?
It hoofed down with rain all the night before but dawned bright and sunny on race day. Only an hour after the start we heard the first thunder but this stayed far enough away to give us some cloud cover but only light drizzle. This was more than welcome as it was stupid hot in the sun. The course was excellent, very diverse but mostly manageable with hidden valleys and sneaky single tracks. The only thing that was missing was some oomph for the legs and I think I came about 7th last.
Sabie Experience (121km (75 miles), 2450 m (8038 ft) ascent, 7h 31.10
What a blast. Four days of dirty fun in mountain bike heaven. Me and my mate Barry combined to form Team Fred Zeppelin and, being a bit whimpish, opted to do the 'lite' version which was half the main race distance that the big boys were doing. Baz has a fancy bike which had been in for a service the week before. Only prob was, they hadn't done anything to it and his forks, were still in Jo'burg supposedly being fixed. His only feasible option was to put his wife's old rusty forks, which were like pogo sticks, on his bike and hope it all held together.
Let the games begin.
Day one was a prologue to get us warmed up and to sort out starting times for the next days race. It didn't rain during the race but the course was as muddy as a muddy thing from the previous weeks storms. Fast and furious fun which took less time to ride than it did to clean everything up afterwards.
Day 2: 35 km, 839m ascent, 2h 30.34, 3rd in category, 6th overall.Day two involved a long awkward slippery single track decent followed by a killer hot climb to the water point at half way. Then it was 20k's of rocky brake squealing down with some interesting single track to finish. Baz's girly forks didn't collapse like the English batting had done earlier that morning and we retained our ranking. By this time I had realised the cleverness of doing the lite race and I informed Baz that if he had any intentions of doing the big boy's race next year he would likely have to recruit a new team mate.
Day 3: 27 km, 517m ascent, 1h 34.36, 3rd in category, 6th overall.By now were becoming aware of where and who our main rivals were. We were in 3rd, 2 minutes behind 2nd but only 1min 28 secs in front of 4th, who were less than a minute in front of 5th. Game plans started to get hatched and keeping an eye on the others was a must. We (I) was slow on the uphills which meant we got passed by the guys behind us and we had to push on the downs to make up for it. Day three saw another slow uphill drag with us catching the 4th place overall guys just before the top. We pushed hard all the way down and through the single track to the finish and beat them by 6 seconds. We now had 1min 34 secs to play with for the last day.
Not too muddy at the end of day three.
All we needed to do today was stick with the guys behind us to ensure they didn't beat us and keep an eye out for the guys behind them. We started at the front of the chute and all was going well until the 3km mark when a marshal sent us the wrong way. It was only a few hundred metres, but by the time we were back on track the whole pack had caught, and passed us. Now we had to motor, and pass most of the field in the mud. Today's profile looked like a camel's hump with ever increasing gradients to a tricky bit of muddy single track at the highest point. Baz is a machine and had got to the top in front of our main rivals, but then had to wait for me.
When I arrived the news was that they were about 2 mins ahead. Again it was big ring, pedal to the metal and brakes used only when essential. We must have done the last 15 k's in under half an hour and only caught our 4th place friends up when one of them fell at a stream crossing 2 km from the end. We couldn't believe our luck but still pushed to the finish line. After the melee of the 3 km route confusion we weren't aware that the 5th place guys had snook in front and beaten us by 2 min 20 sec - but that was alright as we had 2 min 26 sec in the bag on them. We had done it - or so we thought.
Later that evening we checked the final results on the web to find that the 6th place guys who had started the day 5 mins and more behind, had had an exceptionally strong last day and steamed in front of us all to claim joint second place. We were relegated to 4th in category and 7th overall (out of 79). Still not bad for back markers who usually come about 3/4 of the way down the field. We're still quite chuffed. Roll on next year!
Total 121km (75 miles), 2450 m (8038 ft) ascent, 7h 31.10
The difference between girl forks and man forks, or if you're American with a British heritage, the difference between Gal forks and Guy Fawkes.
Team Fred Zeppelin
Lastly...
I wonder how many other sad people there are out there, like me, who record practically every pedal stroke and mindlessly spew it all onto a spread sheet. I have one page for each ride then another page to compare similar rides.
Anyway, now we’re at the end of the year I am the proud owner of endless information on how far and fast and high I went in 2010.
Each of the last two years were around the 4500 km mark but this year went well with more training and more races. I had 5000 km in mind but it soon became evident that 6000 km might be attainable. I devised another spreadsheet page to tell me what percentage of 6000 I was on and what total I would reach if I continued at the current average rate. The 94.7 in Jhb, Noon2Moon, Pilgrims, and Sabie Experience races helped boost the figures in December and this last Tuesday saw the 6000 milestone. Cathy and I actually stopped and took a picture with a cell phone!
How bad are they?
Then, whilst entering the data that evening I noticed that 6205 would be a nice round figure to achieve as that would equate to an average of 17 km per day. So, today I was hard at it in 30+ temps making sure that even with the most major of mechanicals I could even push my bike the last few km to reach the target. A surprising stat is that during all this my ascent was in excess of 91000 metres (57 miles).
The boring facts are as follows.
Total 6250 km (3885 miles). Roughly half Mountain and half Road bike.
Height gain 92161 m (57.3 miles or over 10 times up Everest).
327 hours in the saddle - ouch.
242000 calories burned - how many cream buns can I eat now then?
Paul
