IN THE SADDLE: A weekend full of FIRSTS

Where do I begin? A rad, awesome and eye opening weekend!

To start something you need to take the first step, put the idea into action, or have a mate to prompt you to challenge yourself to do something different.

Often the craziest things start with an idea and end in amazing memories! So next time you have a crazy thought, write it down and make it happen.

Over the weekend I embarked on a challenge to ride 208kms, yes you did read that right, for Qhubeka. What does QHUBEKA mean?! Qhubeka is an Nguni word that means “to carry on”, “to progress”, “to move forward”. Read more about it here.

The 208kms formed part of the #Qhubeka5000 challenge on the 16^th of July.

So why, did I do it? Here a few of the reasons

To contribute to the greater cause of #BicyclesChangeLives
To grow awareness
To contribute to charity
To challenge myself
An opportunity to push the boundaries and do something that I hadn’t done before.

The ride was rad and I was accompanied by a great mate in Kevin Benkenstein. By the way, Kev has a monthly feature that you should definitely check out!

The one thing that you will learn about Kev is that he rarely goes anywhere without his camera or go-pro! Result? You get plenty of well timed, radical photos!

Here are a couple of photos from the 208km journey on Saturday.

First light! Cold, but worth it for that view!

Open roads, open mind and time to think!

Time to strip! Having ridden the first 100km in negative temperatures, strangely 6 degrees felt very warm!

The five finger salute for #Qhubeka5000

Signing out from a rad day out! Learning a lot about myself and enjoying a number of firsts. I look forward to the opportunities that lie ahead! As a good Spanish friend (amigo) of mine likes to say “Vamos!”

Joshua Nuttall is part of the marketing team at Purple Group and a champion cyclist. One of Josh’s sponsors is carelnolte.com, which is an affiliate company of CN&CO. Josh’s dad Tim, with whom he rides a lot, is the rector of St Stithians, where Carel is the chairman of the governing council. Josh also rides for PinkDrive, which is one of our favourite charities. Josh is also a keen runner and runs for Born2RunAC– which is also the home club of a couple of CN&CO team mates and sponsored by Purple Group – which is where we started in the first place!