I’m a little behind with the blogging, so I’m trying to quickly squeeze a few topics into one blog.

The Good:

Long, easy mountain bike rides on the Highveld. Drinking water straight from the spring. (Fountain)

You may have to fight a frog, a tadpole and a cow pat for the freshest water,

but as long as you lock the gate, no one gets hurt…

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Since I ate my helmet, (and embraced training technology when we started base training about a month ago.) I have been enjoying training with my Power Tap thoroughly. (Rent your Power Tap today from the folks at Saris/CycleOps, South Africa)

For Valentines’ Day, my coach Ian Rodger gave me 3 hrs at 300 Watts. So romantic.  I rode to the top of Franschoek pass, and being new to trying to keep a constant power, I’ll tell you, trying to do 300W downhill through the road works in Pniel or down the main street of Franschoek with tourist drivers, speed bumps and couples on Valentines dates, gave a new meaning to “adrenaline”…

Also, going down the pass I tried to shape myself into a parachute, because the 53×11 was not enough. Fortunately those 28mm Specialized Armadillo tires at 60psi helped slow things down and smooth the road a bit.

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And why I’m not racing Xterra Temecula coming Sunday(2005):

It all happened on a sunny afternoon about 6 weeks ago. As usual, I played my own little “carry all the groceries in one trip” game. A 15 kilogram bag of potatoes (Caveman staple diet) obscured my view of the trail leading up to my cave, but hey, being in familiar territory, I climbed the 3 steps leading up to my cave entrance blind…

The previous nights’ Warthog casserole must have been a bit off, which in turn threw my stride pattern out, causing me to miss the first step. Almost. Actually, my big toe nail did make the step. The rest of my foot not. So the big toe nail had to carry the not-so-inconsiderable weight of not only one Caveman, but also about 30kilos in groceries! Lets just say the nail didn’t stand up to the task. But it did stand straight up in the air. For a moment I could see it pointing at the bright blue African sky, but only for a split second, as it was quickly obscured by large volumes of blood spurting from the hole where my big toe nail used to be.

So that was the lesser injury.
The real hurt happened when I fell with the bent knee of my other leg straight onto the sharp lip of the 3rd step. Lets just say it was #&$@! sore. I couldn’t assess the damage, as I was seeing stars, and the blood was flowing like a river. Think Amazon river. The dog loved it.

Eventually ran out of blood after 3 hour ride.

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