The Amazing Adventures of an Average Actuarial Cyclist

Back in the good old days when the Cape Epic was still affordable, it started out in Knysna, traversed the South-western Cape to finish in Lourensford, Somerset West. Then it was decided that the Cape Epic entrants prefer to ride in circles and Knysna was dropped from the itinerary (the Epic now starts in Cape Town). Left out in the cold the people of Knysna decided to host their own stage races and thus the slightly easier Knysna 200 and the tougher Knysna 300 were born. The Knysna 200's marketing philosophy is  "want to enjoy all the benefits offered by stage racing, but don't want to die en route doing so?"  and this fitted very well with my my idea of an easy finish to the autumn before a long winter break from cycling. Day 1 - Knysna Elephant Park to Knysna. 75km 1,500m ascent - "Mud, oh glorious mud!" The morning of the race I had my first look at the distance & route profile and suddenly realised that this is slightly tougher than marketi

On 26 April 2014, 200+ cyclists descended on Eselfontein, Ceres, famous in the Western Cape for it's singletrack, for a race involving no singletrack at all. The Trans Karoo is a 240km one day endurance event, across the dirtroads of the Tankwa Karoo and climbing up Ouberg pass to the Roggeveld to finish in Sutherland. I have never done a long endurance event comparable to this and the longest training rides I did after the Argus were about 80km so I was a bit apprehensive of the day ahead, I decided to stick as far as possible with my Wines2Whales partner - Dewald, not that he has ever done a race like this, but at least he has trained with people who had... The plan was basically to take it slow for the first few kilometers with a big climb up Swaarmoed pass, and then.... - well that was the extent of the plan but I was hoping to finish the race in under 12 hours, requiring me to average 20km/h over the 240km. Important Pre-Race photos with the support team On the morni

In the week leading up to the Argus the weather predictions were ominous, a stormy south-western of up to 60km/h were predicted, meaning especially the first half of the race, usually the fastest half would be tough as the groups would be riding into the wind. As the big day got closer the weather predictions only got worse and I quietly decided to drop this Sub-3 madness and just go out and enjoy the day. Dewald & I at the start in Group B True to the weather predictions, the Sunday morning was gusty with a stong south-western wind. After observing the chaotic riding and numerous crashes in 2013 I decided to just stick to the back, keep out of trouble and once we get to Simonstown start working my way to the front-half of the group to be in the mix when the inevitable break-away on the Smitswinkel climb happens. Just worrying about surviving have one benefit, Sub-3 was completely forgotten and this took a lot of pressure off the ride. The organisers in their (la

Its March and time for the BIG one - The Argus Cycle Tour . Since going for an Argus victory is the exclusive domain of the pro-cyclists, most casual cyclists target a specific time, a Sub-5, a Sub-4, Sub 3h30 etc. Cycling magazines devote pages of advice on how to obtain that elusive "Sub-x" time. The big target for amateur cyclists however is the "Sub-3", it's the amateur cyclist equivalent of running the 4-minute mile, not quite impossible but very hard to pull off and instant "street-cred" in cycling conversations to those who manage it. To put it in perspective, in 2013 & 2014 the winning times was about 2h40, meaning that you had to finish within 20 minutes of the leading riders and within the first 500 positions out of the 35,000 entrants. The deciding factor in achieving a Sub-3 Argus is your seeding, in 2013 only a  B seeding or better would do, in 2012 & 2014 a few riders in group C also made it but virtually nobody below those