Had an awesome start at 7.16am just under an hour after Lance Armstrong kicked off his race, which he missed to win. On the M3 Muizenberg I managed to speed up to 96.5 km/h (I am sure there is a limit of 80 somewhere) and caught up with lots of fields of cyclists all the way to Simon’s town. Again more wind and hard fighting but then a great turn of wind around Smithwinkel. All the mountains were easy this year, no cramps and a final run into the finish next to the new Cape Town Soccer stadium.

Unfortunately not my best time – 4hours – but the excuse of course is the wind plus taking pictures and even some video on the way. Cheers to all finishers in this lousy storm (I heard they even closed Chappies way before the cut-off time) and hopefully to a better race in 2011!

Here we go with the pics:

Had a fantastic time – and good results on Saturday, but Sunday definitely a hard time, including a flat tyre 1km before the finish which made me carrying the bike on my back and running through the line instead of pumping up a new tyre!

Thanks to Jason for sorting out the Dirty Dog Sunglasses mountain bike shirts and for us being the official race team!

Just found out my results from Saturday (Sunday was not so great!) – 41 overall from almost 1,000 participants

This time, I bought a Garmin Oregon 300 navigator and downloaded maps and mountain bike tour data from www.gps-bike.com so that we can maximize our cycle time on single tracks and avoid as much asphalt as possible.

Garmin Oregon 300

The track data from gps-bike.com was not as good as I hoped, and on one occasion we even had to cycle 25km tar road instead of the promised single track. The data is not as easily combined as they describe on their website, and the protected rich track data that they use a pain in the a** to load into Google Earth or modify on your GPS.

Also, Garmin charges quiet a bit for their maps, however I managed to extract plenty of Open Street Maps and used the Garmin software to load those downloaded maps onto the Garmin device.

Overall, we had a great trip from Tegernsee in Germany via Pfitscher Joch, Limojoch, Valparola and Falzarego Pass, then heading up to the Rifugio Averau and Rifugio Passo Pordoi. From there we went via Porta Vescovo and Rifugio Bec de Roces to Baita Huette and Groedner Joch and via St. Ulrich / Seissner Alm down to Waidbruck and to Bozen.

Overall about 400km with 10,000 height meters and awesome weather. The height profile can be found below, and the whole photo stream is shared on Facebook and Flickr.

Height Profile of Mountain Bike Trans Alp Trip

Because of our dissatisfaction with the tour data, I decided to publish the GPS raw data (free of charge) for anyone to download from this blog – feel free to use it on your trip and to share any feedback with me via my Google Profile contact page.

• Full Trans Alp Garmin GPS route, track and way point data
• DAY 1 – GPX Data | DAY 1 – KMZ Data
• DAY 2 – GPX Data | DAY 2 – KMZ Data
• DAY 3 – GPX Data | DAY 3 – KMZ Data
• DAY 4 – GPX Data
• DAY 5 – GPX Data
• DAY 6 – GPX Data
• DAY 7 – GPX Data
• DAY 8 – GPX Data

Some of my favorite pictures:

Run was super slow (took 30 minutes for first 4 kilometers) but from Southern Cross upwards had a fantastic time.

Spent afternoon @ my favorite wine fram in Constancia.

Awesome family day!

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Here we go with more pictures

In 2008, I won a lottery entry for this event where entries are sold out literally in seconds. Unfortunately, due to work pressure and all the traveling last year, I decided to drop out and gave my ticket to a friend from the Atlantic Triathlon Club in Cape Town. Either way, got some friends from P.E. in town and had a chance to experience the Epic City with all the exhibitors and sponsors, and riders of course. I must admit the organization is fabulous, everything in perfect order and no stress at all.

Most of the teams are sleeping in tents during the 8 day race, some in Camper vans that are more comfortable. All the pro teams have their professional mechanics and masseuse with them – a must for such a hard track. The route consists over 700 km with over 17,000 height meters to be climbed up (and down) – definitely a demanding track with very technical single tracks.

The official website has live rider updates, interviews and all the latest rankings udpated online. Just saw that the founder of mountain bikes, Tom Ritchey, will be coming over from CA – awesome!

Today’s highlight was the riding of the pro log trail. Due to the fires in Cape Town, some parts of the track were closed, however we had an awesome time on the track up to Table Mountain and then declined from Kloof Neck over the pipe track back into Camps Bay. End of the 90 minute races – an ice cold beer in the pool

Below some pictures from today’s cycling: