Dirt for Tar

Yup it is that time of the year where I trade dirt in for tar and do the Momentum 94.7 Cycle Challenge road race. This year it has been harder then normal to do the change and I have only managed 3 road bike rides before the race next Sunday. 2 weeks ago I had a fantastic 101km ride with George, Nadine, Gary and others. This ride I got dished a plate of pain by George and co and it made me realise the difference between road biking and mountain biking. Road biking is a lot more intense, it is a lot quicker, but there is no respite and you keep peddling or else you are dropped from the group. 

Last Saturday I once again did the Nissan Down and Dirty 70km mountain bike race from Irene. I love this race as it traverses the routes that we ride on our longer training rides. Unfortunately at the start of the race when I switched my Garmin on, there was no battery and it switched right off again. This meant that I had to ride the race 'blind' with no idea of how far or fast I was going. It is amazing how  much you rely on your Garmin and it was difficult to gauge your pace and plans to beat previous times.

Well, I did do better then previous times (3:30) even though they changed the route the last few kms via a rocky hill and I got 2 punctures. Great race, well organised and marshalled even with 3000 odd riders. The best part was having a few beers with Mark, Adam and Mike at the end of the race. 

Grumpy when realising that my Garmin was dead...

Today was an awesome group road bike ride loaded with personal records (click here). We went to Bedfordview and up Kloof road and Fishers hill to try get the legs hill ready for next weekend. It was fantastic riding in a 20+ group of riders, except the cars/traffic was not that great and made me more of  a mountain bike lover then ever. Hopefully I have done enough for next Sunday, I haven't done long road rides with hills like last year but have been kept busy on the mountain bike so we will see if I can improve on last year's time of 3:25......