Update from Paul and Yolande

Hi all

The first part of the season is well under way and as expected it has been a frantic start to another year. Yolande and I would like to take this opportunity to thank everyone for their support thus far. Without everyone’s help this 2012 season would not be possible and we are very grateful for all the assistance both large and small that helped make this happen. We’d also like to let everyone into a bit of what we have been up to. Firstly, we have moved and expanded our shop and that has made a big difference as far as our customer care goes, which goes hand in hand with sales and is ultimately what it is all about.

Our sponsors:

Epic Sports is our main sponsor covering our training, race, travel and accommodation expenses as well as looking after our bikes and sending backup and support to the races.

Omnico who in the past have been one of our biggest supporters have returned with us in a big way supplying fantastic bikes (GT Zaskar 29ers), race wheels (Easton) and Giro equipment (gloves, helmet and shoes) on both race and training levels.

USN have supported us with their massive nutrition range as well as their fantastic advice, helping us get the most out of their products as well as some event entries.

CycleOps have come on board with MTB power metres which as you all know are essential for accurate training.

ASG have done a great job with the new kit covering us from head to toe with their fantastic F-Tech brand as well as Rudy Project glasses, San Marco saddles and Sixz undergarments.

Biccicletta continues with their support (5 years?) supplying CrankBros pedals, Ritchey stems and tires.

Squirt Lube have continued their support since their inception, helping to give our bikes longer life.

Continental have always been a great help with their continual support of tires.

Training:

Training has gone according to plan this year even with so much on the cards, including the new shop and Yolande’s involvement in web development. Our build has been steady and the numbers on the power metres continue to climb so we have been happy. I will admit that moving to the big wheels, new gearing ratios and set-up has taken some adjustment, but I think we are eventually starting to get it all together. We have been using our Power Tap hubs on MTB for both training and racing which has been fantastic, giving us really good data and motivation to fine-tune our programmes.

Racing:

Racing started out well with Yolande winning the opening marathon of the USN Series and me finishing second in the elite. I followed that up with a 3rd place in the second round of the series, so I’m in a nice position for the overall. Yolande won the opening round of the SA XCO Series in CT as well as Round 1 of the Momentum UCI XCO Series in Giba Gorge. She then followed that up with a 3rd place in Round 2 of the series in Karkloof against international competition, proving that form is where she wanted to be going into the world cup in Pietermaritzburg. We also raced the marathon and ultra-marathons at both Barberton and Sabie which turned out to be a little disastrous. The good taken away from them was tweaking of the bike set-ups to hopefully ensure marathons go a little better from now on as well as a little bit of exposure and preparation to our goal events.

Speed bump:

Some unfortunate news was that Yolande, while practising the course in PMB, had a huge crash and consequently fractured her wrist which required surgery and therefore she obviously couldn’t compete in her goal event of Round 1 of the World Cup Series. This was a blow, but after all this is mountain biking and a part of the risk we run daily.

Where from here?

Yolande is already onto the trainer, but it will be around 8-10 weeks before the cast and wires can be removed and then there will be some rehab time. I will continue with a lot of local racing as well as pairing up with talented youngster Arno du Toit for Joberg2c and possibly Sani2c. After that Yolande should be up and firing again and we will turn our focus to the SA title races which are luckily far closer to the end of the season this year. We will also look at a return to mixed racing (it has been over two years since we have raced this format).

Other info:

I have been writing a short blog every week for the Waterpoint website which is very popular and helps to bring exposure. We have also launched our shop website (www.epicsports.co.za) with an online community where we can post comments and give advice and it has been growing in popularity. Our personal blog spot is very behind, but we will be spending some time on that soon to get it up to speed (www.blogspot/pycycling.com). Yolande and I are also involved with a couple of other projects, one being coaching, where we currently have four SA champs in our portfolio as well as some interesting up-and-comers. We are also involved with and support two local schools and their programmes and focus on the Anatomic/Spur school series with things like skills clinics, mechanical clinics and support at events. It has been very exciting and growing in leaps and bounds (our one school had their opening ride/function and 62 kids showed up to ride at Groenkloof!)

Thanks again for your continued support and we will try to keep the updates and results coming. For those of you not aware you can also follow our progress on Twitter with our feeds from @pcordesracing and @yolandes.

Regards,

Paul and Yolande