Testing a Specialized Ruby Elite Road bike

I had the pleasure of testing a Specialized Ruby Elite Road bike this week.

The Specialized Ruby Elite is a women specific road bike which offers female riders a relatively inexpensive way to enjoy the enhanced levels of comfort and lightness. 

The Zertz inserts technology in the frame and fork dampens road vibrations to a pleasing degree ensuring a smooth, soft and comfortable ride.
Even with the Zertz inserts there is no significant difference in the frame stiffness, making you feel under total control at all times.

Specialized does a great job of making sure that women cyclists are perfectly comfortable on its bikes and it is such a pleasure to ride this bike.

The Specialized Ruby Elite is a fast, smooth, comfortable carbon road bike which, for the price, is definitely worth recommending to beginners and experienced riders.

http://www.specialized.com/us/en/bikes/road/ruby/rubyelitecompact

Jailbreak Triathlon

It was a warm morning at the Jailbreak Triathlon held at Brandvlei dam in Worcester and the water was also a nice 20.5 degrees Celsius.  This is the last race to qualify for Western Province Triathlon Trials and I was hoping to do well. The swim distance was 1.1 km and  wetsuits was allowed, In my Xterra Vendetta wetsuit and ready for the 1.1 km swim.

I was eager to complete the swim in my XTERRA Vendetta wetsuit and to get on my Felt TT bike. "It was my first race on the bike and I was very excited to feel how it goes. I was about 8th lady out of the water but manged to finish the 44 km bike leg in 3rd...the bike was going like a Boeing!"

I was just ahead of Robyn Williams and the race was on...I was not very keen to give up my 3rd position! She started closing the gap in the first 6 km loop of the run as I was keeping a moderate pace in the heat. I increased my pace in the second 6 km loop and managed to open the gap again. In the last 2km of the 12km run I look behind me and there was ladies behind me that came from nowhere. I increased the pace once again...there wasn't much left, but I'm not giving up my 3rd place in the last km of the race.

 The last 500m was a sprint to the line...'head down and don't look behind u...just to realise that the lady behind me still had to do another lap.

I was ecstatic, I finished 3rd overall behind Kelly van der Toorn and Dianne McEwan. I was also 2nd in my age group (19-29).


Thanks to Mobii, XTERRAWetsuits, 32GI, Linebreak Compression, Virgin Active and Cape Auto Centre!  


 

Stellenbosch Triathlon

Saturday was the first Stellenbosch Triathlon at Rustenburg Wine Farm. It also was my first race back after XTERRA Worlds so I wasn't sure how it would go. 

Registered, racked my bike and ready to go all out. At race briefing they told us that we will climb over 300m in 20km on the bike course. It was going to be a hard and hot ride with expected temperatures up to 40 degrees Celsius. 

The race started at 9am with a 750m swim. I swam really hard and had a great swim in my XTERRA Wetsuit and I was the second female out of the water. The bike course was not very technical but challenging with some steep climbing from the start. I was racing hard as I thought I lost a position during transition, but manage to catch one of my competitors in the first 5 km. I thought I was second and kept on racing hard to catch the leader.....not knowing I was leading...

Into T2 I had about a 5 min lead going into the run. I think I pushed too hard on the bike...the 5k run was extremely tough with the heat and challenging hills. I walked up a few hills... (backwards, to keep an eye on the competition behind me) :)

I lost about 3min on a shocking run but I managed to keep the lead.

I finished in 1st place overall in a time of 2:06 and was ecstatic as this was my 1^st overall win in a sprint triathlon.

Thanks to Xterra Wetsuits, Mobii, 32Gi, Virgin Active and Cape Auto Centre Tri Team.

Well Done and thanks to the team from Iqela events for organising another great event.