The Ouzo

Race de brief Firstly getting to the venue and in and out is a breeze compared to Steyn City, initially when I went to fetch my race number I was not impressed, but race day proved otherwise. It might be though that there are a lot fewer riders this year. Secondly, I did not have fun. But it was probably my fault I was nervous for some reason at the start, made me nauseous. But I moved to the front and decided I was going to hang on at least until Kyalami. I think this was a mistake. I knew the pace was to hard from me 5km in, but I stuck it out, but when we started climbing after Grayston I decided it was not sustainable. By that time I had already burnt to many matches. On my own I settled into a rhythm at a steady pace until a tandem came past and I hooked on until the top of woodmead exit. I let them go after that but at the same time started riding with a chap from F group. We rode together until just after Douglasdale suburb, just keeping a pace slightly more than steady and having a nice chat. I stopped for a pee as we turned right out of Douglasdale and from there just kind of rode on my own. I pass Gremlin heading towards the zoo, he recognized my name on my number and shouted out, so we rode a little way together. After climbing back onto the highway I put my head down and grabbed any tow I could find until then end. I didn’t get the time I initially planned, nor my 3:20 weather revised time, but I achieved my PB for the race. Previous was 3:28 back in 2001 on a shorter route and 20 years younger. So I’m happy with my achievement.

I must be doing something wrong in the app, it shows up on the website.

Have you had any luck with the finish time app? keeps showing no races

I’ll post more words later. @gremlin was lekker meeting you.

I got a blue one. 15+

everything you say is true. I've done enough driving in CPT to know to re-adjust my expectations when I'm down there. As for driving up here, lockdown and then consequently getting a job 2km from home has shown just how much stress the daily commute puts on you

phones are also an issue, but much less so. generally it will only be a particular app that is a problem. What I dont enjoy though is this 11pm - app store says 11 apps need updating. No problem hit update. 5am - app store says 7 apps need updating. WTF? And some app seem to want to update weekly.

First let me state I'm all for software updates. Fixing bugs and getting new features to keep a device or app alive is great. But I have a rant, and whilst this one is aimed at Garmin they are definitely not the only guilty party here. I hate updates that screw things up, be it setting or the introduction of bugs. And Garmin are guilty of both. My Edge 130 started giving me issues with the battery the other day. I have since discovered that it was after a software update but first let me explain. My normal usage on weekdays is to grab it from my charging drawer on a Tuesday, put it on the bike and do a ride. When I'm done riding I simply hang the bike up in the garage, Garmin still on. Normally this is fine for my 3 1 hour weekly rides and a Saturday 1 hour ride, I will then charge it Saturday to be fresh for sunday's longer ride. But a week back saw me try and turn the Garmin on on the wednesday after having ridden on the tuesday, the device would turn on, battery indicator showed no bars and then it turned off.. I charged it wednesday, skipped the rest of the week and then rode saturday where it was fine. This time I did not charge it for sunday as it had only 1 hours use. Sunday morning it turned on, showed zero battery and turned off. So I rode with a battery pack connected. This week I did some experimenting. Charged it up and left it, checked it after 1 day, then 2 days, then went for a 1 hour ride on the 3rd day. All was 100%. But something caught my attention, on the 3rd day, after the ride I took it off the bike and had it next to my bed whilst I showered and changed, it was still on, it never turned itself off like it used to. And THAT is where I discovered that the software update must have turned off the Auto Power Off setting. But that is not the only gremlin with Garmin updates, very often it stuffs up the Auto activation of Live Tracking, something I rely heavily on for the wife to make sure I'm still safe. Like I said in the beginning of my long winded post, this rant is aimed at Garmin, but they are not the only culprits. Why cant these software updates save your previous user setting first and then restore them back when complete ? Its sort of OK if you discover the setting has changed long before you need it, but most of the times you rely on these things to work, and when they dont its at a time when its to late to fix it right there and then. Rant over. Back to work.

many years ago Kyalami was open on certain days for cycling training, used to do that often. It is the most special part of the race for me, not only the motoring heritage, the memories there with my dad watching the racing (long before they revamped the circuit in the 90's) and then my uncles ashes that are scattered in the kitty litter through the esses. The highway section is cool mainly because you get the highway to ourselves for one day of the year.

probably the best suggestion, but maybe go wider than electrical tape. I'm sure Thule probably sells the rubber, but it will be thule priced.

if you found it to hard then train harder. When I did my first 947 road race back in '98 it nearly killed me, I vowed to not do it again unless I trained properly. Why do people want everything to be easy ? It used to be / is called a cycle challenge for a reason

Going to agree with some of the comments, having done 947's since 1998, I've pretty much done just about every variation of the route. Its never as interesting as CTCT. There are maybe a handfull of interesting parts, but its mostly just a challenging (for me) bike ride through closed off streets and highway.

on my ride this morning I was actually thinking about what the % of out of towners are for CTCT, 947 and Amashova

I got my QR code via SMS not mail

Windy is no longer predicting rain. Let’s see how it changes in the next few days.

I'm thinking the same thing. If its like that on the morning I'm just going to solo it

weather app still predicting wet and windy for sunday

I saw pictures of people wearing the kit from this weekend, scrap that idea, did not look as good as the promotional pics.

it would not even turn on this morning. Well it turned on, showed the Gamin logo and then turned off. Last week sunday it managed around 4h30m without issues, it did 1 1 hour ride on wednesday, would not turn on on thursday so I put it on charge, it worked Saturday for 1 hour, would not turn on again today. Going to try charging it using a different cable and charger this week, but I'm not taking any chances for sunday so will charge up the small backup battery pack, I'll spend the time after the race troubleshooting.

Can’t do oros on the bike plain water for anything under 2-3 hours , 32gi endure for longer.

no money for a new toy. Will have to nurse this one along for a while longer.

I’ve got a smaller lighter battery pack that I’ll use for next weeks race. It wasn’t charged this morning so just grabbed the big one.

When your Garmin battery decides to not hold charge you make a plan.