New wheel’s come to life

I wondered if Merry knew that change was in the air. Starting from the gate, the clouds were grey and heavy, and the wind was fresh, bordering cold. I wasn’t particularly motivated to go cycling with the imminent threat of rain, and as I started to climb the first hill the rear gear’s started randomly slipping across the lower cogs whenever I stood and put pressure on the pedals. I stopped a couple of times to see if I could twiddle the barrel shifters to improve things, but a few Km down the road the real problem became clear. My rear gear cable snapped clean off at the shifter hood.

After a few moments tidying the mess, I turned for home, with the joy ahead of tackling the nasty Yonder Hill climb on my patched up 2 speed – the new gears being hard, and harder. It wasn’t yet 2pm though, and Helder Cycles would still be open. Despite the less than enticing riding conditions, I figured rather than waste the afternoon I could nip by and hopefully get the cable replaced and gears fixed. Luckily they weren’t too busy, and less than an hour later I was pedalling back up the R44. It took a lot of effort to ignore the slip road at the top of the hill and suppress the urge to head home to a warm couch and some trashy TV.

Merry behaved the rest of the ride, and although the threat of rain never diminished, it also never quite arrived either. Just spots here and there, but nothing to make me want to put my horrible sweaty, non-breathable rain jacket back on. I resolved to go online that evening and actually order the wet weather gear that I’d been slowly mulling over for a week or two.

Closing the garage door, I also wondered how often I’d be riding Merry again. With all the components now arrived, tomorrow would be build-up day for the new bike. Maybe the broken cable was just coincidence – but in over 4 years Merry had delivered trouble free riding. It’s bizarre for a breakage to happen the day before the new ride came together,

Pictured left is William of William’s Bike Shop part way through the build-up process.

As it turned out, the new bike wasn’t quite completed in one go on the Monday. The one component I had decided not to buy purely from internet research was handlebars, and sure enough that was the one item none of the local suppliers had stock of any of my preferred choices. In the end we decided to put a standard 42cm Giant bar on as a stopgap for now to let us complete the build and replace it with something fancier later.

The remainder of the build was completed on the
Thursday, with relatively few hiccups – just the odd screw thread not quite reamed out fully, but all things that William had the tools to sort out.

I’m not a weight weenie, but it was also a pleasant surprise to see how light the complete build had come out – a reasonably svelt 8.3kg. That will go up of course when the light race wheels and saddle are swapped out for their more durable and comfortable audax counterparts.

It was very hard to contain my excitement on the first ride. At last the new bike was a whole machine – not just a pile of components and dreams lying around in boxes on my office floor. That lighter weight was immediately noticeable on the first few climbs. Combined with the stiffer frame it made for a lively and spirited feel. Just the merest extra surge on the the pedal and she leaps eagerly forward, ready to race. The riding position is also quite different, although it felt very natural over the short 30km test ride I did with Marleen. It seems that Justin may have been right about my saddle height – William’s setup ended up very close to the 74cm bottom bracket to saddle top height he had predicted. The lower 72cm setup on Merry had occasionally felt cramped on recent rides, but it’s surprising it felt good at all.given how large a jump in saddle height 2cm is. I’ve also got a hunch that William was right about me needing a seatpost with more lay back. It’s only marginal, but I did find myself pushing out over the back of the saddle to get into a natural and powerful pedalling position.

That’s tweaks and fine tuning for the future though – for now, I’m greatly looking forward to putting some solid kilometres under Jolly‘s wheels. Oh yes, the name, Jolly. That was in fact my first choice, but my impression Dad’s gang had the nickname of The Jolly Boys proved to be mistaken. That minor detail doesn’t really seem to matter now though – those first few turns of the cranks put such a huge smile on my face that Jolly is clearly the perfect name. And it’ll still be a memory and link to dad, regardless of it only making sense because of my faulty memory.

All photographs by author.

If you can’t stand the heat …

It’s a couple of days since the Argus for 2012, and after a gym session and massage, all that remains of the day are a few lingering aches and a ton of great memories. Foremost of those for anyone who took part this year will be the soaring temperatures they were faced with during the latter half of the ride.

Standing in the start chute in the full glare of the morning sun at just past 8am it was already clear that heat was going to play a big part. Once we were underway though it really didn’t seem too bad over the first half of the ride. A bigger factor during those early kilometers was trying not to crash into waves of charity and corporate groups who seemed not to have read any of the pre-race guidelines, and opted instead to spread out across the full width of the road and just stop dead in front of you on a whim. Despite that minor annoyance, there were a few bunches of riders from my TT start group, and also groups just ahead and behind, and we made quite decent progress down the blue route, over the evil stretch of short climbs on Boyes Drive, and through Simonstown.

Coming up on Millers Point my Garmin (now reliable again) was showing close to the pace I’d need for my 4:15 target. I knew before we set off a sub-4 was likely to be beyond me in the expected heat, so I’d already adjusted expectations even before the hold-ups getting through the crowded sections. The new plan was holding up though: my water bottle should last out until the second or third water stop after the climb of Smitswinkel looming just ahead; and my energy drink was only just over half gone, also about right for current progress. How quickly things can change.

As the road turned in to the mountain for the last stage of the climb, there it was, the first waves of real heat that would be mercilessly sapping our reserves for the rest of the ride. As we crossed from the East to the West of the peninsula the heat rose from a manageable 27 to 28 degrees, up to 38 degrees in a matter of about 40 minutes. After a nice fast downhill race from the top I pulled in to a water stop. I wondered about filling both bottles, but the stop was busy and I wanted to get going as quickly as possible. I knew I’d need to stop again, so I figured it was better to hope for a quieter stop further on and then refill both.

Scarborough and Misty Cliffs was the usual brief but refreshing delight of cool misty air mingled with the smell of the ocean as we rode alongside the breakers.Sadly, it’s also a fast stretch of riding so is gone all to soon, replaced this year by a sweat drenching slog over Slangkop and down to Ocean View and Noerdhoek. By this stage, I knew a 4:15 was gone and it’d be a battle even to equal my time of last year. Just before Chappies I took a quick stop, filled one bottle with water and the other Powerade. That’s unusual for me, but I knew I needed more than just water and the energy gels and bars were now just making me feel sick rather than giving me anything usable. Whilst waiting for the bottles I also downed a coke and a powerade for good measure, before setting off into the furnace again.

The next hour and a bit getting up Chappies and the one last hill beyond was honestly the toughest of any Argus I have done, including the storms of 2009. Certainly the closest I’ve coming to bailing, and had it been any other ride I suspect I may have stopped at a bar and called it a day. There’s a magic to Argus day though that demands more from you – and so far, has always found it. Every year, something has inspired me over that last barrier of Suikerbossie, and this year’s arrived in the shape of a rhino. Not a real one of course, but the tandem bike costume was almost as big as a rhino, decked out in Saving Private Rhino logos. My legs found some new strength and I pedalled hard, but the rhino beat me to the top. Hopefully the fate of real rhinos in the wild has an equally successful outcome, unlikely as that seems right now.

After Suikebossie it’s all downhill, quite literally. Apart from the minor bump of Maiden Cover rising up after Camps Bay. Small it may be, but that was where my legs gave up and locked solid with cramp. Luckily the work was done by then and I could pretty much coast to the finish. I crossed the line, greeted by the delightfully welcome sound of Yoli and Ben cheering from me at the line. The ride and I were finished, for another year.

As it turned out, it had been equally hot and unpleasant waiting for us to finish, so I’m not sure Yoli will volunteer again if it’s as hot in future year’s. It was lovely to have a welcoming party though for a change, especially one bringing much needed water.

My official race time was 4:36, only 7 minutes quicker than last year. The much tougher conditions. though are evident in my best ever race position of 47%, much improved on last year’s 58% and the first time I’ve made it into the top half of the finishers.

The madness begins

I guess like all good stories, one should really start at the beginning. In my case, the cycling madness began back in January 2008, with the somewhat unexpected acquisition of my first (and still current) road bike, “Merry“:

It might seem more correct to say the trouble actually started in September of the year earlier when my brother-in-law entered me for The Cape Argus bike ride, but that wouldn’t strictly be true. At the time I was living in the UK, with just one bike: my trusty and much loved Marin soft-tail mountain bike which would soon be crated up with our other belongings for our move to Somerset West in the Western Cape. I really had no plan to do more road riding than was strictly necessary to be fit for the 108km ride, after completion of which we’d get back to the traffic free trails and mountains. Fate had other plans though and through a combination of shipping & customs delays, our container including said mountain bike were quite literally stuck at sea. With less than eight weeks remaining to train before the ride, something had to be done. I bit the bullet, went into the nearest bike shop, and asked them for something entry level to train for the Argus on. As luck (or good salesmanship) would have it, they had a 2007 model Merida 903 on offer and in my size – Merry. As I left the shop I fully expected it to be a short lived relationship, ending up either gathering dust in the shed or being sold on Gumtree. Half an hour later, as I was dismounting for the third time to walk up yet another hill, I was even more certain road bikes were not for me. The gearing was killing me. Even standing my legs and lungs just couldn’t push me up even the smallest of my local hills. And that was bad news – because where I live we’re surrounded by hills, most of them anything but small. It was beyond my comprehension why anyone would build a bike like this – where were all those easy gears that let you spin your legs into a blur to fire up even the most brutal slope. No, this road bike lark really wouldn’t be my thing.

Ha! Famous last words, little by little over the next few weeks with a steady flow of kilometers under Merry’s wheels, an unexpected thing happened. I started to look forward to my evening rides, and, even more bizarrely, I started looking forward to those hills. They still killed me, but I found myself walking less and less, and eventually hardly at all. Instead, a puffing flushed sense of triumph greeted me at the top of each hill. The bug had bitten. Road biking would be my thing after all. And all because our shippers couldn’t deliver on time. There are still times when I curse that, but overall I guess I should thank them for their tardiness. 

Anyone looking closely at the above picture will notice that Merry has had a few modifications since her initial purchase:

  • SRAM Rival 50/34 compact crank – because even though I’ve come to love road biking, I still miss spinning those easier gears on hills
  • Tri-bracket – what can I say, Cape summer’s are hot and I sweat a lot. Two bottles are very often not enough, and I don’t like backpacks when out on the road. They seem to get in the way of that wonderful light and free feeling you get when belting down a hill at 70kph.
  • Easton wheels – total extravagance both on a bike and rider of my level, but one day maybe I’ll be able to do them justice. Until then, I’ll enjoy how light they are and how quickly they spin

These are pretty minor though compared to the whole raft of changes planned for Merry once this summer’s road rides are out of the way and winter training begins. Check back for details of the changes and the reason for them in future.