The first day of racing proper, and the promise of new singletrack sections throughout the 93km route had the start line pumping at 7am this morning. I’m pretty sure the enthusiasm for a pre-dawn wake-up and freezing start line will start to wane at some point… But for now, 500-plus riders fueled by free Seattle […]
From the Little Ring to the 5 Rings
It has been 3 months now of settling into life as a cyclist here in the USA, as I alluded to in my last pen piece the old dog body was a little worse for wear. With some awesome help from the team doctor here, the blood tests revealed low levels across the board. A […]
Jumping back in the saddle for JoBerg2C
After eating my body-weight in Easter eggs and only two short rides I’m happy to report I’m nicely recovered from that other rather large multi-stage mountain bike race near Cape Town. And I’m already itching for the next adventure. Thankfully, it’s just around the corner… It starts this Friday, to be exact. The Old Mutual […]
Slowing down – the way to race fast
On the cusp of my Marathon Mountain Bike racing debut, I’m at a total loss – power vs flow – how do I incorporate the two? It is growing frustrating, I’ve found that any effort to maximise the strength & endurance advantage – owing to my roadie prowess – leads to nothing short of disaster. […]
The perfect brew
Currently, I have an accelerating enthusiasm for coffee. Black coffee, to be a little more specific, black and extremely short, often in the form of a double [triple?] and forever shy or ANY sugar, raw or otherwise. Great coffee is a rarity, even in a city as large and ‘cultured’ as Sydney. It takes a […]
Naomi Hansen’s blog: Next stop ICME Alice Springs
Training following an eight-day stage race like Absa Cape Epic is very VERY difficult. Initially you find yourself highly motivated, thinking you are bullet proof, stronger, faster, invincible and you enter random events trying desperately to get back to the void that is a mountain bike stage racing. However, when race day rolls around and […]
The Road to Recovery?
The ABSA Cape Epic is a world renowned Mountain Bike Stage Race. And rightly so – I can think of no other race where an amateur athlete can race with such a deep field of professionals, and be so well looked after by the event team. As such, having to pull out of the event […]
What the Cape Epic giveth…
Related Event: ABSA Cape Epic
What the Cape Epic giveth… She can just as easily take away. Over the eight days of the Absa Cape Epic I found new levels of strength and new depths of determination. With every passing obstacle, emotional, physical, or meteorlogical, I uncovered a piece of me which had previous been obscured. It seemed, by day […]
Smiles and Miles at the CORC 6 + 6 Hour
Spectators have a funny knack of drawing upon a stand out feature of the riders they’re motivating. For Mimi Guillot, eventual winner of On The Go/Onya Bike Belco and Civic 24 Hour Solo National Champs, it was “Happy Birthday Mimi!” from one end of the track to the other (I hope she saved some room […]
Stu Spies: Using your Angry Words
As luck would have it this past weekend saw not one but three intrepid MarathonMTB.com’ers take on the Roc Laissagais, a race with a name so unfathomable for my sledgehammer African linguistics that it boiled down to, ‘The Roc’ and so it shall remain! Heavens above, having basically hit the ground running from four solid […]