Bardet,talk about doing things the hard way,he’s still in it but I imagine that’s going to be a tense team debrief…

Why? He had many punctures and he’s gona have to say sorry Ollie you could have wn this one but you saved my ass several times like last year in the echelons. And gonna say to Dillier glad we took you as Ollie’s sidekick excellent job boys.

First check the airport brussels Zaventem or Brussels south aka most ryanair flight which is actually located in charleroi.

There will be some trains running but hard to predict which ones and if they might not stop short of their normal destination.

There will be busses going from main cities like Bruges to airports regularly.

Was keen to get all excited about another trail ruined. But those steps are quite small will clear easily ont hte mtb downhill and it actually looks doable to me to ride up them, welcome new challenge pity its a bit far from me.

Update time:

So after beiing injured(well stil have some piece of bone floating around in my right thigh musle) and beiing told to hold the high intensity work for quite a while. Doc cleared me to do some racing but take it steady don’t bloody try to win the thing.

So we go to the local cyclosportive two weeks a go. Rolling wel make that crawling start with a brake check from the lead car at the foot of a 3k 7% climb. My lardy 83 kg ass got shelled out of the back from the lead group almost immediately but we got some figures from the machine 405 watts(that 4.9 a KG) for the 5′ effort and 325(that 3.9) for 20′

Actually quite chuffed a s a s said I have been of the bike for three- four weeks and riding quite a bit with the handbrake on. The 5′ effort is a PB since I have a power meter, definitely went quite a bit higher in the past but thats 15 years ago. 20′ effort in comparision a bit weak but I backed of not to blow when I knew the lead group was gone after 10′. 262watts in the first hour including the descent back down into the valley.

The week after saw another race with three nice 20′ effort climbs sadly conditions were bleak rain all night and on the start line and well 3 degrees thats at the bottom of the valley. When we crested the 2nd climb to access al was white very white. 20cm of fresh slush next to the road, 50 cm of powder a bit higher up the mountain. The roads went up a bit higher and started to get covered in snow. Powermeter was a lot smarter then we so it went in hibernation mode and just chucked out some rubbish data from time to time. It was as smart as many riders who balled before the start or on the route. Bonked nicely on the last climb to limp home just outside the top 10.

Going back at it tomorrow but the shorter climbs and a bit of lower back pain I am not expecting much of 20′ data.

He jumped after a dog the fell from a leisure vessel late in the evening on a lake. Probabely because of the cold water got into trouble and drowned.

I’d be interested to know if you can get it cheaper than here

https://www.beerwulf.com/en-gb/c/beers/

You definitely can. I am a Belgian living in france and stock up  the normal grimbergen leffe hoegaarden at les then 2 eur a litre, regularly promotions at 1.75 or even 1.50. And France is more expensive then Belgium.

a belgian site letting you now which shop has offers on http://www.bierpromoties.be/

This topic inspired me to set myself a goal for 2018 of 4,5 Watt a kg in my 20 min test. This as 1 hours tests are horror and the are many 20 min climbs around here for people of my fitness level.

Only have a power meter since a year and a half.

Training is manly focused on having fun as I don’t like intervals anymore did my share in the previous century.

So in 2017 I hovered a long will around 300 watts making it a mere 3,45 because of my 87kg weight.

In may 2017 I went for it on a climb that ws just to short and we got at almost 320 so up to 3,7.

In september I did a cyclo and some nasty bastard climb got me at 350 watts confirmed by a 15 min effort a week later with similar values so we got to the lovely <span style=”text-decoration: underline;”>4 Watts </span>a kg.

Focus on 2018 is getting the number up a bit and getting the weight down to 80 kg at least.

Not done any dedicated efforts recently because of winter lack of shape. Wont be for a while as I had a hard crash on the mountainbike 2 weeks ago which did quite some damage to the musle fibres in my right thigh limiting the hard effort and burst for a while to get it to heal.

Got an about 300 watt effort early jan on my commute putting me around 3,65 watts pre crash

Got some post crash 10 minute efforts with heart rate on average 10 to 15 beats below treshold at 280 Watts so guess that if the leg could sustain the pressure would get we at a guestimate 320-325 actuall form which thanks to the weight loss equals about <span style=”text-decoration: underline;”>4 Watts </span><span style=”font-size: 12.8px;”>a kg again. </span>

Just to loose some more flab(still above 80kg) and get the power back up to last years values. Just half a WATT to go. But all depends on the leg injury how bad it is and the healing time. It already cost me a training camp can’t afford to loose another one.

Have been close to  a VAM of 1000 or at it on the steeper climbs and would like to get it at around  1100 for 15-20 min efforts so that I can get some reasonable results in the local cyclo’s here in hilly France.

a definite +1 for this forum And https://www.bikehub.co.za is the cycling forum.

I used to live in South africa temporarily and visited many times but I tend to avoid Johannesburg if I can so can’t help much.

Made it left it a bit late as stated earlier so I had to go big in the last weekend and Big I went. Had planned for 5 hours yesterday and 7 today, chuked out 6 yesterday and almost 7 today as I ran out of daylight. Got to 315k and 3900 m of climbing which got me past the 500 mark with some margin. Never thought my winter legs where gonna cope might hurt tomorrow so will just go for a spin. Must say sunshine and nothing else to do helps a lot, the wind early on almost got me today was dodgy when it blow from the side. But I found a quiter valley with a better angle and later on it died down quite a bit.

So its back on was at 175km with two and a half days to go icy rain coming down ice on the roads and ready to give up.

Then the clouds opened up and I decended into the valley to escape the snow. Cue more snow donw there(temperature inversion??) 55km and ice water running down my legs I hopped back into the car.

Yesterday I woke up 20 min from the spanish border planning to do a metric century leaving me with a mile century for today hard but not impossible. Got lost and eager a bit yesterday and chucked out 145 km in the Spanish sunshine(I feel a bit like a cheat ;) ).

It seems windy today but if I repeat yesterdays effort then I am done lets get dressed and ride.

I once won a sportive

I ‘ve only came 2 nd and twice third.

But when I came second it was behind a pro world champs medal winner(only track though).

My domestiques from that time whent on to rider for Europcar and Canyon PRO MTB. I just got ill and fat very quickly after those races where held.

So its 8 days you need to do 62.5 km a day.

Day one I did 63.8 a full k ahead of schedule christmas I stayed in the valley near my parents place average 2 degrees munched away 104 km so got some margin. But then boxing day in France thats a working day with raods iced ver no commuting. Wednesday I was surprised to get up to the house in the snow and Ice. I am off today in the afternoon but icy rain left the bike in the car and nice sliding car on the ice to get home gets the afternoon hopes down with the icy rain. Of to spain tonight for the sunshine but 330km to go I really needed that ride today another DNF i guess

I have got a 2015 Mukluk aluminium though with Bluto obvious choice to me if you wanna give it gas downhill.

Its hard to be correct you can ignore most of the south americans too. Map data for down there is a bit of. When I lived in Brazil it would almost double my altitude gain. Struggling now with snow to get decent my normal gain. Will just pretend for another day tomorrow and then slowly glide down the leaderboard.

Normal shoes and decent socks does the trick for me.
0 degrees medium thickness sealskinz socks
-5 thick socks
-10 or colder i put the shoe covers on on top either old school thick ones or a pair of MT500 I can go for hours in these temperatures even go across streams without getting cold feet.

Yet your shoes to tight and you will limit blood stream and get cold feet.

Make sure you preenter for the local race its apparently compulsary from this year on. Unless you wanna do some non uci event quite some local associations organizing races aswell.

Route des cretes would be a nice one although its sadly gonna be far from traffic free in this time of the year. Or a challenge up Ballon D’alsace do it from all its three sides. Balon the servance closby is harder and used to be very quiet but I haven’t been on that one since I got myself properly lost around there aged 14

Look at the tracks from Cap Nore from nearby villegly. I rode it in 2016. The main descent from the pic nore is ok stuff. I did the 80k or so route. The missus the 60k the extra loop in the valley from the 80 kis not really interesting. There are two descents on the way up that are actually quite a bit more rad than the main descent further on the route. Its quite a long day out for the full loop.

I live 3 hours away by car and would go back another time(which I don’t do often) So I rate it quite well

Racism still rife in the Tour the France

Booing Chris Froome on the road and today again.

Combativity not for De Gendt they really like to stick their ass up their nationalist ass

What are you looking for in Lyon? visiting the city country side? some riding road or mountainbikes? The missus used to live there so I spend some time on my bike around there.

I asked the question a while ago. I ended up sticking them in my hand luggage. Got thorugh heatrow fine recently with three of these packs(endurance racing) of those and some other batteries and powerpack firepower all together. Hold you might see them removed.

Seeing this mentions from Dan from Nam.

When I crossed paths with Vinokourov I was riding with Dan from Nam whilst he was already from nam then just know as Dan. Dan was my loyal training buddy and domestiwue back in the days.

Dan’s grandfather(after whom he was named) is actually a lot lot lot more famous in his home country and South Africa. I have not met the man as he died before I met his grandson. Just met Dan’s dad mom and sister. But have the real Dan(ie Craven) actually has statues(we used to meet at one for ou rides) and I went to a Rugby match in the Craven stadium as well.

That man is almost like the Eddy Merckx of (Southern African)Rugby

Joan LLaneras whilst having a coffe on a ride a couple off days before he became world champion again in front of his home crowd.

Vinokourov who got saved by a mate a couple of days later from beiing roobed or stabbed as he was cycling straight into a very rough area. Missed Mario Cippolini though sadly the same week apparently by a couple of minutes.

Frederic Kessiakoff decided to come and do one of our small local races one day as well.

So ranked on safety Garuda scored 58 out of 60 as this is top so biggest airlines not top 60 best. Quite poor then. But then I have flown with arlines ranked just above. With Taag when they where still blacklisted and some dogy local carries in deep africa. I have gotten old now I avoid even TAP and so.

so there’s usually an hour’s slog uphill to the top. We figure ebikes could reduce that to 15 minutes

I hope that’s a typo else you are a bit optimistic E bikes give assistance but not 1000 watt and if that was possible you would drain the battery rather quickly. 15 min gain on a 1 hour climb or if the track is good halving the time don’t hope for more.

Look for battery capaciy and live though thing have improved a lot the last years and the modern stuff can go a long way.

I assume you will use the assitance quite strongly in the climb fase and once up high tone the level of assistance down or be stationary or n foot regularly without battery consumption.

One of my buddy’s has one he says it makes hime go up normally impossible stuff and get up out of the valley rather quickly he lives at 1000m out of the valley means ofthen easyly doubling that.

Anothe big mention for 27.5 plus tyres

GX 1000 doesn’t have removable spider according to the tecnical inforamtion. The model up the GX 1400 does(I have two of the latest in my shed)

There where very cheap replacement rings for the GX 1000 on chain reactions a while ago worth a look to see if they still have some

Have to keep flagging the same idiot on an E bike to protect one of my few remaining uphill Brazilian Kom’s. Had many but some idiot seems to flag everyting with a bit o descent in as dangerous. Lost my pride and joy 67K passes 2nd out of 3700 now but the guy has a powermeter proven 750watt average comparision says I timed it wrong as he nudges pas just before the end. Good memories of sunshine. In my local land i get beaten most times by a lot by some French pro Giro stage mounten sateg winner top ten rider. But on the downhill into my house we are even, so nice of him to ease off and leave the local lad his pride.

Great stuff. The race is called race to Rhodes going from Pietermaritzburg in South Africa to Rhodes. Its the smaller brother of the Freedom Challenge als known as Rasa race across South Africa(thi one is more like 2000k). I have done the route twice, so do know the terrain as i was planning of going full tilt on the full event in 2015.

An arm injury made me start with little fitness so I just mucked about on the bike and enjoyed the scenery and catch up with some old mates and make cutoff so most nights got 8h our sleep and a couple of hours at the braai or bar.

This time round I wanna go fast. The power meter would not to be to aim for a certain zone but more as a sort of handbrake. I know myself and I get to keen and push to hard which I will most likely pay for afterwards.

Night time navigation will be interesting as well with no route markers and a big chance of no other competitors nearby.

Go ghetto its a lot les forgiving for dinged rims

I pointed out the price difference between the Uk and europe site early on. I put my money on the vat algorithm beiing wrong, Brexit advnced by a programmer error.

I am with trailrat here block of metal grinding wheel file and presto.

Come on lazy, get going we need some pre work entertainment

If you have some money invested look into capital gains taxes. They are not the same and you may very well end up paying tax on what in you home country was tax free from the date when your investment started. 2000 value 5 pound actual value 20 move to France sell and pax tax on 15 even if free or lower rate in home country.

Brexit striking already.

The put way bigger discounts for UK then for the continent. Must you guys add VAT and import fee’s now? Feeling discriminated

Interesting. Where would you guys set the rev limiterin % of treshold heartrate?
i have entered some 550k non stop even in slightly hardcore african terrain. i have cruised the route before in six days But this time round would at least wanna do sub 4 possibly sub 3 days. Have done 15h on the bike at once but fear the sleep deprivation. Have a tendance to ride a bit to hard too so need some handbrake setting guidance.

Gorges de Tarn is lovely, not far from my place to many people/tourists in july august though for my liking

Globalti’s list is very good. Argus route is scenice the ride to noordhoek farm village over chapmans peak is one of the most beutifull roads around. There is some other threads with MTB ing advice there is lots of great stuff about 1h or 1h30 away from cape town. I can advice if you want been there plenty of times. Cape town is less as an off road riding spot as Tokai the main place is still trying to rise from its ashes after the big fire.

Globalti’s list is very good. Argus route is scenice the ride to noordhoek farm village over chapmans peak is one of the most beutifull roads around. There is some other threads with MTB ing advice there is lots of great stuff about 1h or 1h30 away from cape town. I can advice if you want been there plenty of times. Cape town is less as an off road riding spot as Tokai the main place is still trying to rise from its ashes after the big fire.

My Salsa mukluk with bluto goes better(comfort and speed) downhill then XC fully’s with 130mm travel both ends. Against enduro bikes it depens on the terrain which one is more ecomfortable and faster. Can’t keep up with the downhill boys who gap all the rough stuff though.