The Ouzo

100% Many years ago in a road rage incident I emptied a jet stream of pepper spray on an assailants face, between spraying him and the time it took for the spray to do its thing on him, he managed to grab the pepper spray out of my hands and attempted to use it against me. The only way to stop these #$#%@# is to take them out. There needs to be a sting operation where these guys are caught and dealt with.

Oi. Getting worse. Pack your rain gear.

To the danger zone Decided to not tempt fate and turned around at BRB

Yeah when I saw the thread pop up I initially thought it was that same thread where you had shared the routes previously.

Hmm, todays prediction says it could be a wet one

Problem with getting gpx for older routes is that there really weren’t cycling gps devices back then. I started using my phone to record rides in 2010, so I have a few from then to 2022 will try and get them exported to gpx when infront of the pc again.

Must be something with my phone.

where is this ?

Is anyone else having issues loading pictures to Strava today ? Comes up with an error, "cant resize and compress photo" , I thought it was my new phone taking pics in a different format, but tried some pics that I had taken with my old phone and it still wont upload. Then also remembered that I had uploaded a pic with my new phone about a week ago and it worked.

Weather prediction as of this morning.

Its sickening that we have to deal with these idiots aswell as the thugs trying to take our bikes by force From the time lines that my colleague mentioned, I must have passed on the opposite side of the road shortly before it happened.

Anyone got more details of the cyclist that was taken down this morning on Great North/Pomona Rd ? Kept hearing it on the traffic reports this morning and then my colleague at work mentioned he drove past and it did not look good at all.

Jan smuts passed the zoo should count as one as would the climb up to Hyde Park

Seeding - I’ve never done many races in the year, most of the times seeding was spot on, but occasionally they’d seed me to far back. But this was my own doing as it’s was usually after I had skipped a few of my normal races. A quick email normally sorted it all out. back then cyclelab had an events page, I’d go on there and most of the races were listed so I could pick a choose. road closures weren’t to important either, less traffic on the roads and less “golfers” cycling so people generally behaved from both sides. There were one or two races we started to avoid because of safety issues though. im with Jewy here, I’m not a marketer, but I can say when something is not working, and the current marketing is not working.

Agreed on all points. Marketers have become lazy, and this is not specific to races or cycling.

I've measure just over 96km without the new addition

with a bit of margin for error we might be finishing on 99.9km then.

there is a level of safety attached to the correct seeding too. Having quicker people trying to go for a good time mixing it up with slower people trying to have a good time means the quicker guys will inevitably take chances they should not be taking, some of the slower guys will want to try and stick with the quicker guys and perhaps not have the skills to match the speed. There are many reasons seeding similarly able folks together makes sense. For a race to get it so wrong 2 years in a row smacks of incompetence. Then there is the new race finish video for the 947 thats come about. Surely with 2 weeks to go, having a new race finish with some additional challenges thrown in should have been communicated. The pros want to know where they should position themselves for the final attack, the backmarkers need to know they should be prepared for a few extra km that includes a bit of climbing on tired legs. Either I've missed the communication about this or they has been none at all.

We need to get a drone in the air there and catch these mofos. Tired of this ***

what were the other 2 incidents. Some details please.

havent seen anything to this effect yet

certain big races mix it up. First x amount of batches are gun to mat, there after they revert to mat to mat.

but we dont all start in one batch. So now you've dropped back 4 batches, how do they know this without picking your chip up at the start line. What about guys that decide to join the race between the start and the first timing mat on course ? They've now ridden less distance, perhaps even skipped a climb. If we're talking pros, maybe even Elites, then I'd agree with you, but the moment you have amatuers involved you should have a timing mat at the start. Every timed "race" I've done for the last 25 years has managed to do this, why change it now.

Reading feedback from a number of events over the last year or more there seems to be many complaints. Everything from timing, to parking, to seeding etc. Are we expecting to much from organisers or are they dropping the ball ? And if its the later then why ? Have the costs spiraled out of control and organisers are cutting corners in order to host events ? Most of these events where the complaints are coming from are not new events, teething problems should be well ironed out by now. Inexperience cannot be blamed either. i know we have a number of people on here that have or still do organise races, as well as people that are well informed and or connected, so their input would be great.

That is the biggest BS response I've ever seen. HTF do they not have mats at the actual start.