Happy Easter Riding

Easter weekend and it started off by being an awesome good Friday. 8 of us ventured out to Big Red Barn mountain bike park just outside of Irene and yes, we rode there and back from Benoni. Incredible ride with a great bunch of guys - I ended up in doing almost 100km (click here for: Strava stats). I was a bit worried after going to Physio  during the week as my right knee was playing up the previous week - this is too close for comfort as Sani2C is in a few weeks time.

 

Turns out that my knee is out of alignment (joggers knee), my outer quads are doing too much work and pulling my knee cap skew. This may have been caused by my right pedal having some play and my cleat being worn on my shoe - long story short, I replaced my cleats and Greg lent me some new pedals and there seems to be no more discomfort - yay!

 

I was really impressed by Big Red Barn - wow what an amazing track... I do need to go back there as my technical abilities are a bit rusty (scary drop offs and loads of bumps). We only did about 16kms at the bike park as we still had a 40 odd km ride back to Benoni and time was not our friend. Here are some photos of the gang at the coffee shop at BRB.

Paul, Greg, Clint, Mark and Warren

The gang

Easter Monday and what better way to ride off all the excessive chocolate than riding at SuikerBosRand Nature Reserve. Greg, Paul and I headed out for a great hilly ride as the East Rand is soooo flat and we need to do some hill training before Sani next month. I really enjoy SBR because it's so picturesque and the riding is safe but hard.

 

Paul removing his arm warmers (note the hills in the background)

 

 

 

 

Training ride/race in Naaaigel

We did a fantastic race last Sunday from Nigel Italian club in the East Rand. This race is called Suikerbosrand Route 42 MTB Classic and it really was a classic race. I have done this race a few times and it keeps improving every year. The route was really awesome loads of single track climbs and flowing jeep track. Fair amount of climbing 800m in the 75km route to keep the legs honest. It was great training ride for Sani2C next month as you had to go flat out for close on 4 hours. Although we did a 95km ride last weekend this ride was twice as hard and my legs really felt the training efforts that we had done during the week.

Greg and I at the chilly start

I also learnt something from this race - don't try keep up with the racing snakes in front at the start - I burnt a few matches trying to keep up with the front runners averaging over 30km/h for the first 15km. Nice field of nearly 300 people that entered the 75km race and even with pap legs I managed to finished in the top half. Here are the Strava stats for this ride.

Some of our weekly riding group - Rennet, Greg, me, Becky and Sean

Lovely early morning MTB rides this week and the chance to witness the sun come up

 

 

To Hill and back

Great ride on the weekend to Heidelberg and back from Benoni. We met at 6:00 at the gym as it is starting to get darker as winter slowly creeps in. Nice group of 11 guys: Greg, Adam, Paul, Warren, Sean, Renier x 2,  Aiden, Michael and Mike. The pace was fast out to Heidelberg through the mine dumps and then a lung bursting spin up to the top of the radio tower hill. The weather was brilliant and most of us did between 90-100kms for this ride (depending where you started), click here for my Strava details of the ride



Nice flat tracks lined with Cosmos flowers

Quick pit stop to pump up a wheel

The group at the top of the Heidelberg Hill

Me and Adam in our new Section7 kit

Warren looking out for oncoming trains

Aiden and Michael

Paul

Sean

Greg

Yours truly making the cosmos look pretty



Mr Calves (Warren) trying to catch up with the single speed