The Amazing Adventures of an Average Actuarial Cyclist

My biggest fan at the finish Some people are under the impression a Sub-4 Karoo2Coast is equivalent to a Sub-3 Argus. After my second failed attempt at a Sub-4 K2C I can now confirm that it is not equivalent, it's indeed much harder! Karoo2Coast often falls on the weekend of my wedding anniversary so all else being equal it is not a race I will get to do often. Special permission was required to make an attempt this year, luckily our anniversary also happens to fall near a public holiday so this year K2C fell on a long weekend which allowed for a short anniversary weekend away and K2C double feature. The Saturday we stayed over near the cute town of De Rust, did the touristy activities with the kids and had an anniversary pizza dinner in town and then it was an early night to be ready for Karoo2Coast the next morning. To be fair the winter school holidays + cold weather + flue wreaked havoc on my training schedule and I was never quite fit enough for a realistic Sub-4

Racemiere finishing Day 1 Gravel & Grape is a fairly new stage race (The first event was in 2015) hosted at Goudini Spa in the beautiful Breede River Valley. I have some family roots in the valley and good memories of spending December holidays in the area so I was always keen to do this race and finally this year I got my chance.   Team Racemiere was resurrected as I was reunited with my brother Pieter again, both our families were booked into camping spots in Goudini making this a proper family weekend. Gravel & Grape has a reputation for having tough technical & rocky singletrack and a few sandy spots between the vineyards, so proper preperation would have helped but between work commitments & dirtroadie events this dirtroadie managed to train a sum total of zero kilometers of singletrack in the 3 months leading up to the event. Not exactly ideal preparation. But the plan was to just take it easy and not ride too hard but even so other than being fit I

At the end of January the seeding for the CTCT was sent out , now there were 2 more races on the calendar to prepare for the CTCT. But then out of the blue I got invited to do the Tour of Good Hope(TOGH), a 5-day stage race in the week leading up to the CTCT. 5 days of cycling, 600km, about 6000m of climbing - not ideal tapering before a big event! But this is also an amazing cycling opportunity that cannot be missed so there I was, having fun cycling every day in Paarl from Monday to Friday killing off any realistic attempt at a Sub-3 Argus! I was given the advice that the best thing to do on Saturday before the race is to not rest, but to go for another(!) ride - a light spin to work out the lactic acid built-up in the legs during the TOGH. The legs felt fine during the light spin but by now I have cycled 8 days in a row in the lead up to race day, cannot imagine that this is the ideal approach recommended by sport scientists! Sunday morning was windless, ideal conditions for

Cape Town Cycle Tour (CTCT)/Argus seedings are out! I am seeded in 1B (the 5th group) with a seeding index of 16.54 based on my finish time at the 2017 Stellenbosch Cycle Tour . This is my worst seeding since 2014, coincidentally the last & only time I managed a  Sub-3 Argus  so maybe in a way it is a good omen, but my campaign for a 2nd  Sub-3 Argus is certainly not going according to script. After the high of Lormar it was back to the reality with the 2017/2018 roadie season. The first step towards a Sub-3 Argus is a good seeding, I started 2017 with my best seeding ever but the cancelled 2017 CTCT and no road races since,  meant my seeding was gradually slipping from great to bad as the year progressed. The race I targeted to get my seeding back on track was the 160km  PPA One Tonner . A good finish time in this race guarantees a good CTCT seeding. However disaster struck halfway through the race, 2 punctures in quick succession near Hermon meant the One Tonner seed