DieselnDust

The media statement is laced with semantics. This event is going to get ugly. I foresee gag orders, lawyering up, threats and a lot of foul play in the future. Where a death has occurred, the police will get involved....

Ok that’s quite interesting that at your height you need that much forward hip rotation *Ape factor: how long your arms are in relation to torso and legs

Out of interest, what is your height and ape factor?

I think you mean periodisation with pyramidal and polarised models ? You are correct if yes. Very very key

For heat acclimation I simply started my training rides late in the day, around midday. All through summer. Sleep late , walk the dog have breakfast with wifey and kids and on the bike by 10;30/11:00 the trails are empty , except for snakes , and I’m doing intervals. In Tokai , bike park is close by for a refuel and hit it again. 5am rides do buggerall for helping you adjust to the heat and it takes longer than you’d think. 80% of the adaptation is quite quick but that last 20% is where you have to start looking at salt/electrolyte intake and get your energy balance right for the heat as it changes.

I think you misread, I said we are the most well prepared. Maybe not the most single track proficient but we have our logistics down to a T. Maybe because we’ve at it for longer , more events etc.

It’s significantly cheaper. Eagle 90 derailleur is 45% the price of a GX AXS derailleur. So it brings the stiffness and reliability benefits of Transmission AXS to much more attainable price point. This kit will be specced on sport level and entry level bikes. The upgrade to electronic transmission is cheaper now. if you have an older bike you up the creek any way as it’s unlikely to be UDH compatible.

The XCRC is very popular. CCS are lapping up what they can. The Scorpion Sport H is also gaining traction in our market but the Rekon Race is stupidly popular. with the Transmission and FA units the spring behind the pin corrodes and then breaks. SRAM warranty the unit but a permanent fix is coming. It’s ok under normal use but with bikes being jet washed at stage races this accelerates the problem. Add some dust and the pins jam which adds a different issue of intermittent connectivity. a regular clean out with electrical cleaner and then silicone spray should help reduce the issue in the short term

I’ll add that during the event I added observing others behaviours as a learning opportunity became a motivator. Make use of the opportunity right. Chatting to riders about their prep, how teams formed , how they trained etc it was a big learning for me. I think I can say that we South Africans are the most well prepared for ultra events out of all other nations outside of the professional field. We seem to sink more headspace into our preparation than the euros or Americans I spoke too. the Spanish are the most quasi pro. I mean aero socks, tight fitting kit , low bmi but somehow no durability tells me they spend a lot of time only on road bikes and those who spoke English confirmed that. I took a lot of mental notes 😂. you could say that as the event wore on, learning more became my motivator for each day. Riding behind people to observe instead of wanting to pass for free space and max enjoyment of the trails. I can do that another time

The prologue and stage 1 delivered fairly high sealant consumption according to Lance from Daisy way. I will just add that Squirt need to rethink their sealant, Dan it’s awful. Once they switched my tyres bsck to my regular Enduroseal I stopped getting latex showers. there were unseen mechanicals. Some issues with electronic gears and suspension and fine dust getting into the system. tyre choices were fairly conservative across the board with Rekon Race and Pirelli Scorpion XCRC Prowall being very popular choices. overall I think SRAM had 90% of the drivetrain field captured with a few challenges relating to dust that they know how to solve. The tech zones seemed quite quiet wrt to broken wheel. Mechs were mostly busy with cleaning battery contacts and then the system worked again. I think mechanical Transmission will be perfect for Cape Epic going forward. some broken pedals , can’t say if it’s more or less than previous years. SPD s still don’t work in mud yet remain the most popular system. There seems to be a resurgence in TIME ATAC uptake. gripshift scale and well and probably most trouble free shifter for cape epic. broken saddles were also popular in the amateur field. Those 3D printed jobs from you know who don’t appear to be sttong enough for Mtb

Motivations? None really. I was asked. I accepted , I rode, i completed. The epic is not a motivator for me. Being fit and ready to ride anything is my motivation, obsession even

Great points both if you 1) the epic is not a participation event - penny drops 2) Enforce cut offs- penny drops again. For 1) this imo is absolutely true. You have to prepare to play. If you don’t prepare you are going to get hurt. I recall on stage 3 on the long descent to WP2 I took all the A-lines. When those lines merged back to single the riders on B actually expected me to slot back in behind them . I got shouted at. There was a lack of understanding of the rules of racing. They say, we’re not racing, we’re surviving. But there is a lack of preparation in riding skill, and understanding the rules. The reality is that the back of the field is a completely different event. on 2) yeah this is actually the biggest safety lever the event management has. Personally I felt all cut off where easily achievable this year despite the heat, if the athletes prepared properly. But the technical skills are really quite poor but many will ride a sub 3 Argust. As the course gets more and more technical those with a skills deficit will find it harder and harder to complete the course within cut off. there is no substitute for preparation. I’ll share a personal anecdote. I rode non of the course prior to the event but I live in Cape Town. This was deliberate because my team mate lives abroad so I figured a having too much of an advantage in terms of course knowledge would increase the performance gap even more. However I have ridden almost all of it at some time in the past so there some memory of the lines. When I compared my riding with my peers in J,K, L,M&N there was a huge gap stemming from approach to riding the single track to bike set up to physical preparedness. Back to cut offs. If the cut offs are tighter I think it will weed out the poorly prepared quicker and lower the risk to the event manager as the week wears on. They sort of do this already with a tough stage 1 and 2 but by pulling in the cut off an hour they achieve more and it will actually be in the interest of rider health and safety

Mechanical has always had a built in break away clutch. It’s called the return spring. The electronic systems needed a dedicated break away clutch because the stepper motor was permanently engaged. The break away clutch changed that. For any mechanical derailleur the first line of defense is the spring. If the derailleur takes a hit it simply moves to tension the spring (not the cable). It’s one of the things I loved about Shimano’s low normal derailleurs aka rapid rise, the spring was always working to pull the deraileur away from the accident. But because Americans didn’t like talking about their favourite Pfizer drug on Mtb rides, rapid rise fell out of favour……weirdos!

The organisers will always be in a polarised situation, I agree. Stage 3 was already shortened from 92 to 78km with around 120m of ascent gain removed. The issue at hand is not about these actions but was enough done in terms of rapid response. The routingUp Pipeline and Boulder City is very hot even when the ambient is 25Degrees C. The sun beats don on that slope relentlessly from 9am in the morning till roughly 6pm in the evening. These is very little shade, not running water and only dry fynbos for shelter. I feel that sometimes #untamed bs clouds common sense and human health and safety guidelines. This slope was hotter than Dubai on a summers day; my garmin recorded 51 degrees C. We should not have been routed that way and I'm saying that as someone who was only mildly affected by the heat on the day. So when you start to rack up may damned if you do, damned if you don'ts and each time you push through with the same choice with every reoccurrence delivering worse results surely you have to consider that maybe the direction your decisions is taking you is flawed and dangerous? Surely

This is the new Reverb AXS which is about to be officially launched along with mechanical Transmission called Eagle 90 and Eagle 70