Adventures of an Ordinary Cyclist

A journal of my Freedom Challenge mountain bike adventures, 2007, 2009(tandem)2011, 2012(solo) and 2014. Race to Rhodes and the 2300km Race Across South Africa. The race starts in Pietermaritzburg and ends in Wellington close to Cape Town, with a 26 day cut-off. The Ride to Rhodes(2008-unblogged and 2010) is a shortened version that starts in Pietermaritzburg and ends 6 days later in Rhodes.

Friday, 31 October 2014

Show don't tell

Apparently I am the last wannabe writer on the planet to hear about the maxim "show don't tell". It's a real gem. Without...

Thursday, 30 October 2014

Creating a main Character

Two more big sleeps before the word nerds (yup, that includes me) start banging away on their keyboards in the quest to drop 50000 words on ...

Wednesday, 29 October 2014

Write what you know

As I contemplate and plan my first novel I have found the process thoroughly absorbing. While a novel is the goal, I am currently more intri...

Tuesday, 28 October 2014

Strawberry Jam and Novel Writing

Fiona Coward put a post on our Weekend Rides Whatsapp Group a month ago asking if anyone had any spare lever-lock keys. I had a whole bunch ...

Tuesday, 14 October 2014

Munga race postponed until Dec 2015

Press release this morning saying that owing to the key sponsor pulling out the inaugural running of The Munga will be postponed for a year....

Sunday, 12 October 2014

Preparation/Trepidation

My race partner Sean Badenhorst used the word combination preparation/trepidation to describe his activities and mindset leading up to The M...

Friday, 10 October 2014

Slow progress

This past weekend I rode the 3 day Mankele 3 Towers Race with Gavin George. Firstly let me say what an amazing race. It's tough with 2 s...

Sunday, 21 September 2014

Water affairs

I have started weighing myself before and after my hour long lunch rides to get a sense of how much weigh I lose through sweat and respirati...

Training observations

In the last 8 days I have cycled 430 Km's on my MTB over 7 rides. That's 23 hours of riding. On the face of it it's a reasonable...

Saturday, 6 September 2014

Let The Munga show begin.

The Munga, a non-stop race from Bloemfontein to Stellenbosch approx 1000km, through the Karoo mid summer. Teams of 2. Daily cut offs and US$...

Wednesday, 18 June 2014

Prequel to "The Mountain Roared"

The last 20 hours of the race for me were rather dramatic but it occurred to me that the first part of the race never got a mention so here ...

Monday, 16 June 2014

The Mountain Roared

So much to say about a few short days. Let's start with yesterday. Arrived at Ongeluksnek just after 8pm having left Pietermaritzburg 3...

Thursday, 12 June 2014

Carrot and Stick Challenge

From the previous post it is obvious that dangling a benefit to the Freedom Challenge Scholarship Fund makes me a soft target. To date over ...

Wednesday, 11 June 2014

The Ordinary Cyclist is Challenged

Chris Morris posted the following challenge I think Mike is full of crap! All this stuff about strategy, rest, flabby guts, over weight, ...

Tuesday, 10 June 2014

Underweight and Undertrained

I have tried the strategy of arriving at the start line overweight and undertrained and it has certain advantages but non that matter once t...

Sunday, 8 June 2014

The necessity of sleep and rest

While attempting a long period of non stop activity such as the Race to Rhodes one needs to bear in mind the necessity of sleep and rest. Fa...

Wednesday, 4 June 2014

The challenge of riding and navigating at night.

Night riding is not everyone's cup of tea. The Joburg chapter of Freedom Challenge Veterans and Friends regularly get together most week...

The Challenges of Navigating the Freedom Trail

In response to a question from Eddie Leggo where he asks "Mike how do you navigate the ride is the route marked or do you follow GPS co...

LCHF and the Race to Rhodes.

6 months ago I adopted the low carb high fat (LCHF) lifestyle as advocated locally by Tim Noakes. I am keen to see how it plays out on the r...

Strategy matters.

Strategy, strategy, strategy. Those are the 3 most important elements of a successful Race to Rhodes. This begs the question - what constitu...

Race to Rhodes! What's that?

How does Race to Rhodes work? That's an interesting question as it is a race like no other. In the inaugural event last year Glenn Harri...

2 weeks to go!

As I sit here gobbling down another Noakes approved greasy breakfast I am aware that in 2 weeks time I will be driving down to Pmb to head d...

On the road again

After a one year hiatus I am returning to race the Freedom Trail route again. Have been babbling on about it on a Whatsapp group. Will trans...

Sunday, 22 July 2012

Day 15 and beyond - the final push

For the first time since the race began I got up at a civilised time and tucked in to a great breakfast. Once everything was ship shape I we...

Wednesday, 18 July 2012

Day 14 - A rest day of 160 kilometres

After just 3 hours sleep I was woken by Brian's alarm. Not quite what I had in mind but I was awake so I got up had a shower and prepped...

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About Me

Mike: Johannesburg, South Africa; Just an ordinary guy who started riding in 2005 at the age of 45. I started with the ambition of completing the local 94.7 Cycle Challenge (94.7km). This is an annual road cycle race in and around Johanesburg. Some where along the way it become a race and not merely a completion excercise. I clocked a 2h54 in my first attempt only 6 months from my first trundle down the road and back. I was hooked and then discovered the magic of MTB. While my efforts on the road were credible, MTBing humbled me. Having said that, over the last 24 months I have competed in 9 multi-day events. I'm a very middle of the field rider, but I enjoy every minute of it.

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