Not much training time left.

Eish......with just a few weeks left there isn't much time for training. I should really be looking at a good long ride this weekend but have a friends 40th tonight, the recovery day tomorrow and then my son has a soccer tournament on Sunday so, I suppose I will be pushing to get a little more riding in next week.
To the riders who are coming along to starfish lets get our sponsorships going. Last night I picked up R2k from my good friend Richard and another R1k from the Westville Round Table thanks to my friend Kelly Winfield which is awesome.
Sadly I do have some good and bad news to share with everyone today, my friend Vicki is not going to be joining us on this year's ride which is sad news but, brings with it some awesome news that she is moving to America to start a new life with Tjaart. Vixen my girl I wish you the best of luck, I hope your dreams come true.......!

Thursday World Cup of Racing

Thursday morning brings the big crowds down to the Durban so called, SafeCycling Lane on the Durban beach front. This morning was no exception with at least 50 cyclists in our group and probably another 100 or so in other groups. The ride down for us this morning was gentle compared to other Thursday morning rides but this soon changed once we reached the circuit with speeds reaching 50kmph on the sprint section. We finished off with a 60km ride averaging out just over 31kmph. Nice training leading into a race weekend with the Gateway challenge on Sunday morning.
Tomorrow is coffee ride, a gentle meander around Westville followed by a large coffee at Wild Bean.
4 weeks to go before we leave for CTN!!!!!!

Easy Giving

Check out my sponsorship page for Starfish http://www.backabuddy.co.za/shunters here you can donate money online in a few quick steps.

Tuesday training

Once again we hit the hills of Durban North, I have had a few days rest since our incident so was keen to ride this morning and enjoyed the climbs. Rode quite easy with my two training buddies and managed to keep with the fast paced okes until the last climb up the M13. With just five weeks to go I am happy with the amount of riding I am doing but may need to put in a few more 100km rides before we leave for the cape.

Fundraising

I am blown away by the response so far with pledges from Orion Telecom, PKF, pilotfish and Shepstone and Wylie. I have set myself a high target of raising R40000.00 this year which I believe is achievable.

WE HAVE A RIGHT TO BE ON THE ROAD

We have had a number of incidents in KZN over the last couple of weeks, some very serious with prominent members of the cyclist community being injured. This morning my friend Nick was involved in a very unfortunate incident where a guy in an old VW Jetta decided it would be a nice gesture to drift from one side of the road to the other and hit my training partner. The driver had the cheek to drive off, had it not been for a set of red robots at a busy intersection there is no way this guy would have stopped!
What was even more surprising was the guy actually had the audacity to say to us that he couldn't see us and we didn't have the right to use the road. First of all we are lit up like Christmas trees with lights, all of us had reflective clothing on, secondly we have a backup vehicle to warn drivers we are on the road and lastly we have a right to use the road.
It has become necessary for us to train in the early hours of the morning to avoid traffic, it has become necessary for us to wear reflective clothing even in the daylight, it has become necessary for us to have one of us drive a car everyday to ensure our safety.
When is the government going to finally do something to protect us?

I can't say that the driver was drunk or whether he was under the influence of anything else, this we left up to the police but I can tell you that he was not fully aware of what had happened, he even admitted to not knowing "what he had hit, he just heard a thump".

I wonder what will happen to the driver, a small misdemeanor? a slap on the wrist? He will no doubt get back in his car, minus the side mirror, drive to work and forget everything that happened at 5:35 this morning.

To those of you reading this who are riders, guys it is time for us to stand together and finally do something for the safety of our family.

Tuesday training

Tuesday's are hill training days for us, we leave Westville and head down to the Durban North area where we ride up and down a road called Margaret Maythem two or three times, then we head back home and up the M13 which is also quite hilly. Finishing with about a 60km ride this is a good start to the week.
Yesterday we only managed 1 x MM and then we headed home at a leisurely pace, quite a change from recent Tuesday mad rides which normally are fast and furious.
The team agreed it was great to ride back at talk pace and not race pace! Thursday rides are the circuit rides and this means speed, speed and more speed with a few sprints thrown in just for fun!

Five and a bit weeks

With only 5 weeks and a few days to go I would hope the team are already training hard? This weekend we did a short but tricky - because of the wind mountain bike ride from Remos in Mt Edgecombe through the TH Cane. Was not a difficult ride but was a typical MTB ride with loads of technical issues, my poor mate Peter who is on a no carbs diet blew about 20kms into the ride and then we spent most of the return route fixing his slow puncture. Anyway we got back safely and finished with about a 2h45 ride, not really enough with the big distances less than six weeks away. I seriously need to lose a few more kgs if I am to enjoy the ride.

Back to the actual ride, seriously need to see some kind of sponsorship this year, the pressure will be on us to raise more than the total from last year so I am going to start tapping the corporates I deal with this week.

Facebook Group

Join my Facebook Group called Investec Starfish Challenge 2008.

Mechanical failure

This morning while I was riding, my pedal broke! Luckily I was going up-hill and not too quick either. The pedal sheared off, I manged to control the bike with only a bruise to my thigh which hit the handle bars. In my years of riding I have not seen a pedal break like this, let alone expensive Look Carbon pedals, so guess what the cycling shop where I bought them is going to get a call.
Managed a nice 45km ride this morning with my training partner Nick, tomorrow is a spinning class at Virgin Active.

Today was also the protest ride organised by CycleSafe here in Durban, on Sunday my friend Anne Schooling and 3 other riders were hit buy a car on the R102 outside Durban, the driver of the car fled and left Anne critically injured, she requires surgery to ascertain the extent of the injuries to her spine, I hope she recovers quickly.

Sani Pass Weekend

Sometimes you just think you are bullet proof! You take on ridiculous challenges, this weekend was one such challenge I thought I was capable of doing but, I failed to make it through both days from beginning to end. Having said this I managed a first day of 75kms and a second day just short of 30kms, I made it half way up Sani Pass and then got in the car. MTB is a completely different story to riding on the road, the rugged terrain coupled with a different setup on the bike changes the way you ride, it is often said that for every 1km completed off road it is worth 2km on the road, this weekend proved that point, what made our ride so tough this weekend was the amount of climbing we had to do.

These pictures was taken from the top of Sani as we were about to descend back down the pass to SA on Sunday morning. This trip took us close on 3 Hours to complete.

We had the most awesome weekend riding and having fun and although it was tough it is a great experience.