This is so funny!
Yesterday I competed in the Carnival City Cycle Race, a 100km fairly flat and quite fast race, the last major race for me before the Cape Argus Cycle Tour in two weeks’ time.
I had a seeding for the A-bunch, but again opted to rather start in the B-bunch. Things got underway and even though the speed was quite decent for the first half of the race – we averaged just over 40 km/h – the bunch seemed to lack some “punch”, with no-one really taking up the challenge and up’ing the pace at the front. I even went up to the lead and assisted in pulling the paceline along, but things never really became heated.
Things were fairly uneventful for thefirst 65km, but at this point the guys slowly started to pick up the pace, with the climbs – even though there weren’t any steep climbs, just some long drags – becoming visibly tougher.
At the 85km mark our route merged with the 65km route, which caused a lot of havoc. All the slow 65km riders blocked our path a lot and this caused a lot of swearing and shouting from within the bunch. When moving along at about 40km/h, it’s quite difficult to get around slow riders doing about 20km/h when you’re a big bunch, over a 100 strong!
As we approached the final 1000m, everyone lined up for the sprint, and with about 500m to go, I was sitting in the leading 20 or so riders. But with the hammer down, everyone sprinting like crazy, things went horribly wrong with about 50m to go! A big crash right in front of me took out about 6 or 7 riders and I had to brake hard and swerve between some traffic cones to avoid becoming part of the pile-up!
This crash caused some problems for all of us, sprinting for the finish, but all things considered, I’m quite happy with my 36th place (amongst the B-bunch finishers of 137 riders). Finish time was 2h39 at an average of 37.2 km/h, a slightly lower average than last week’s Ride For Sight race. This time was nealry 6 minutes better than my previous best on this race though, so I’m quite happy with the result.
This week’s training will continue as normal, but next week Wednesday we’ll be travelling down to Cape Town, so next week’s training will be heavily interrupted by the travelling. A few tapering rides will make out next week’s training/preparation sessions. Then, hopefully, I’ll be ready for the big day!
Happy cycling, and good luck to all other Argus competitors!
Tags: Carnival City, Cycle Race Result, MacSteel
Man, if you want to have a lot of fun (and one hell of a work-out), then take up Mountain Bike Night Racing!
I did my first official MTB night race last night in Victory Park, Johannesburg. What a rush! A short single track trail, which takes about 5 minutes per lap, curls around trees and goes up and down grassy banks, over a few dirt opstacles and under some trees.
The racing works as follows. Everyone starts at about 7:00PM, just as the sun is setting, and you’re given one hour to see how many laps you can complete.
My heart averaged about 168 bpm for the duration of the race, mainly due to the continual rush of adrenalin, but also because of the fact that a few guys from the MTN-sponsored MTB team were present and one really doesn’t want to get lapped too many times, so you push as hard as you can, all the way! Testosterone can be such a pain!
I managed to complete 10 full laps, which was really not bad for a first attempt!
It was an awesome experience and I’ll definitely do it again. What I really want to experience though is a 24-hour MTB race, but this quick one-hour nigt race was also extremely enjoyable and a good, quick, mid-week training ride.
This coming Sunday I’m participating in the Carnival City MacSteel 100km Cycle race in Benoni. The last major race before the Argus. I received a seeding to once again start in the A-bunch, but since last week’s strategy of dropping back one group and starting in B worked so well, I’ll follow the same plan this Sunday.
Happy cycling!
Tags: Mountain Bike, Night Racing
My Sunday started early, getting up at 4 AM to get ready for the Dis-Chem Ride For Sight, a 116km cycle race around the Boksburg / Heidelberg area. This is the second last race before the Cape Argus (with the Carnival City MacSteel 100km race next week being the final preparation-race prior to the big one)
I had an A-bunch seeding, but really didn’t feel up for the pain and suffering which those guys dish out! So I started with the B-bunch, a strategy which really worked out well, since the pace was just right!
I have never done this 116km race before, so didn’t know what to expect, but after having a look at the race profile – and judging by previous results – I thought that a time around 3h15 – 3h20 would be quite decent.
Things turned out really well, since I succeeded in nearly doing a sub-3 with a final time of 3h02! At an average of 38.2km/h, this was way better than I expected. My pacing worked well also, with an average heart rate of 160bpm and average cadence of 88 rpm, pretty much spot-on in terms of what I normally try to keep these parameters at.
The last few months I focused my training a lot on building endurance, in preparation for the Vasbyt, a 151km race in late-March. This also seemed to be very successful, since I felt very strong at the end of today’s race, with a lot left in the legs.
Next weekend is the Carnival City race, a fast and fairly flat 100km route. My previous best on this race was 2h45, so I’ll try to beat that next week.
The coming week’s training will focus mainly on keeping the intensity up, cutting back slightly on volume, since it’s also a “taper week” in preparation for the Carnival City Race.
Let’s hope next week also goes this well!
Tags: cycle race, Dis-Chem, Ride For Sight
