Suikerbosrand :: tough as hell @ 35 degrees C

On paper this place shouldn’t be as tough as it has turned out to be. We only rode 52km’s, the climbing was just over 1,000m, the road is tar (which usually means easy). In fact we planned to cover the track twice today. Well well well – we limped in like wounded soldiers. I think Mike might have been crying … I know I was! The ride came at the end of a big week where we spent nearly 13 hours on bikes of some sort and covered more than 230km in total. An hour ago I was ready to give it all up. I feel better now though. The one thing that did throw us was the temperature – my heart rate monitor clocked an average of 35 degrees Celsius. I drank 5 litres of liquid without making a single pee – go figure. The graph shows the hills.  The video is a 13 second sample of what our 3 hours looked like – gripping stuff.



Suikerbosrand climbing profile

Week 3 summary – (17-23 January)

Crappy week of training. No excuses, just have to double up this coming week.

Managed just over 100km’s.  Looking to do 150km + despite having lost the usual big Sunday ride today.

About 5 week to go until Sani2C. We are treating it as a training ride but this doesn’t make it necessarily easy. It is close to 300km over 3 days with nearly 4,800m of climbing. Last year I was humbled.