JohanDiv

I took the leap and paid for the membership, then it worked straight away.

I'm getting the same error...

Especially if you have to k@k 30 times in a 40 hrs window!! 🙈

I see we made the reel at 2:54 haha. They interviewed us and many others today. Maybe still editing for a later video.

Blood, sweat and tears..it took all of them for me to get across the line. The last two days was the the hardest days I've ever had to endure on a bike.. probably visited the toilet about 30 times in the last 40 hours with a tummy bug(and probably half of the camp as well). Crawled across the line in tears yesterday with only a few minutes to spare..I almost didn't get out of bed yesterday. Completely depleted and I was only able to hold down a meal now an hour ago since Friday. On the plus side, riding at depletion means my legs couldn't put out any power and are actually feeling pretty fresh at the moment. On top of this my chain snapped 200m after the start this morning.. As if ending up in hospital with accute renal failure after Stage 1 wasn't enough already!

Doing much better! Think I finally sort of recovered from the Stage 1 dramas! Still need more sleep though, the days are short with all you have to do after you get off the bike in preparation for the next day. Came off the bike twice yesterday.. First time showing off for the camera🤦‍♂️, second time the guy in front of me hit a rock that then jammed my front wheel and I went OTB into a pile of rocks. I can feel my right knee, upper leg, elbow and shoulder took some shots, but nothing I can't pedal through at the moment. Today is play day... in the rain. I'll take it anytime over the heat again!

Haha thanks! Yes did exactly that today. Came in with 40mins to spare I think. Finally made it to bed, now to catch up on sleep. Crazy headwind, sleep deprived, 10hrs in the saddle, no cramps.. win in my book, hopefully bake to normal by tomorrow morning!

Second test looks much better.. leaving hospital now. Have to report to medic tent at 6am for final test to clear me. If cleared, yet another tough day waiting with minimal sleep!

Interesting and tough day.. I filled up bottle and camelback at the waterpoint just before the big climb and still managed to run dry halfway up. That left me without fluids for almost an hour and a half to the next waterpoint. Was impossible to ride up that climb with everyone walking up(not that I think I would've been able to ride to the top anyways in this +45 degrees heat!), but that took way longer than expected. Started cramping, not heavy, could spin through most of the cramps, but cramped all the way to the finish no matter how many crampblocks and fluids I took onboard. Partner took two tumbles and we spent quite a bit of tome at the medics to sort him out. So all in all we suffered properly today! Our moving time was less than 7hrs, but took us 8hrs30min to get over the line. My partner went to the medi-clinic tent to check out his wounds. While we were there I just asked them if they have something to help with my cramps.. long story short, I'm currently lying in Mediclinic ER with possible kidney failure and I think their pulling me from the race.. waiting for a second bloodtest to make sure. I'm so pissed at this moment that I asked them for something for the cramps! It wasn't that bad, I've had it way worse in the past and I wouldn't even consider asking if my partner wasn't at the tent at the moment! Definitely other people today that looked way worse than me! Legs actually feel good, it was just a bit of cramps! Even if I can ride, wasting time sitting around at hospital instead of preparing, recovery and sleeping now!

And nine beers 🥴😁

Setting off at 07:32:30 on 2 hours of sleep🤦‍♂️

Finally we see some maps of the route:

Here is some info for each stage regarding spectator points: https://www.cape-epic.com/fans/fan-zone/spectator-points

Nah the headwind all the way to Greyton will cool us down 😬

First climb is totally rideable, I don't see any issues there..plus we'll still be in the shade of the mountain early morning so we won't overheat on that climb. Then Helderberg single track pocket down. From there we link to Ernie Els single track pocket with open farm roads. And again from there we link with open farm roads to Dornier single track pocket. All these single track pockets are generally well maintained and manicured with a few tree roots and rocks in places, but nothing to worry about. After Dornier it is the Nek climb back to Lourensford. Here we turned around when our water ran out and it was proper hot by then. Looking at The Nek Strava segment the person that holds the KOM only went up there at 7kmh, so there will definitely be people walking up there. 3km with 410m elevation gain @ 13% average gradient in the heat of the day. After that climb we drop back into Lourensford for the second half of the stage. I don't know those trails, but looking at the profile it looks like the second half of Stage 1 is the easier play part.

Haha no that is just a route I built, we only did the first 40km at around 14kmh. The time you see on Strava is estimated from your average speed that you held over the last 4 weeks.

I'm also sitting here nervous about Day 2 (Stage 1)! From memory trying to figure out what we rode on our Stage 1 recce ride I tried plotting the route: https://www.strava.com/routes/2938721351944686522 This is a comparison of the route I draw vs the profile on the Epic website, looks quite close: I think I got all of the major singletrack pockets and climbs correct, but I keep missing 12km. First 45km looks correct, then dropping back into Lourensford I probably missed a few twists and turns, and again around 75km it looks like they are climbing a bit more on their profile than what I have. The thing is, I'm already close to 3200m, and can't see us climbing less than that. That advertised 2850m seems a bit off, especially with 12km of the route still missing.

Yes we were talking about it this morning.. Few stories coming up that makes you think the organizers might not be as organized as we thought they were. To an extend understandable with the short turnaround time from the previous Epic to have some route hickups to sort out last minute I think. For instance, I had a chat with the owner of Plasir de Merle the other day after Trailseeker, we were suppose to descend over their land on the final day towards Val de Vie, but after having a deal with the organizers to host a night or two as a race village, spending a fortune to plant grass for a race village, they canceled and opted for Coetzenburg that they could get for free. They still wanted to use their trails though, she then basically told them to "F-off!". So now we are being rerouted around Plasir de Merle..I'm sure there are similar stories dealing with hundreds of different land owners where the organizers would have to reroute us last minute. Also heard this morning from my partner(he has a friend that is a townplanner at Stellenbosch Municipalty) that the application for the approval of the race village at Coetzenburg only landed on their desk this week!! That's cutting it a bit close I'd say!

@RichA nothing to worry about on the Prologue route, really!! Few meters of rutted root en rocky sections, but didn't notice any off-camber sections, drops or tricky sections.. really all well maintained manicured trails and easy open gravel road climbs. We expected to do it at 12km/h(probably why we are starting 6th haha), but even at a very very chill pace today we did it at 15km/h. Partner's Garmin read 610m climbing, my Wahoo read 645m, and Strava 719m. https://strava.app.link/RfkYYHDKkob 2km from the finish line they are taking us over a bridge here:

I'm not seeing a dedicated topic for this year's Cape Epic yet, so starting this one. Please delete and direct me if there is already one.. One and a half weeks to go.. glad we are finally tapering now! So here is the Prologue route: https://www.strava.com/routes/2936898477485135392 Looks like they finally added spectator points on the route profile for each stage: https://www.cape-epic.com/riders/what-to-expect/route We did about 75% of Stage 5 on Saturday with a tailwind, pretty much perfect conditions. That made me think that for Stage 2 and Stage 5, the transition stages, the wind will actually be a much bigger factor than I thought it would be on an event like the epic. Headwind on the Theewaterskloof Flatlands(and the wind can pump on that section!) can quickly turn an easy 45min section into a 2hr slog into the wind. I think our prep went pretty well, we rode around 60% of all the routes over the last two months as part of our prep. Nothing that particularly scares me, but I think it will be a different story doing Bakenskop and UFO on four-day old legs instead of fresh legs!

And here is the Prologue route on its own: https://www.strava.com/routes/2936898477485135392

The route builder said it would be interesting to see the pro's blasting through that off-camber sections.. for us slow-going backmarkers it wouldn't be too much of an issue I guess. Here is the Strava route I made from his activity. They did the Prologue plus an extra Stage 1 climb on Saturday.. https://www.strava.com/routes/2936896968458378784

We are riding the Prologue route on Saturday.. friends did it last weekend - apparently nothing too technical, nothing close to plumb pudding.. only thing to look out for is a few off-camber corners that can catch you out at speed. also lots of space for overtaking. Not that that would be an issue for us, we are the 5th or 6th slowest team starting the prologue at 07:32:30 haha

Sho... I did a 2h52min CTCT and kept with my group, pity I don't have a powermeter on my bike. Pretty sure I didn't have to hold anywhere near that power haha. But anyways, that's a lekker tough workout! If you can do that workout, then you'll easily sub 3 if your seeding and the weather plays along..

To repeat... YASAS!!