JohanDiv

On the map, in the top right corner, select the USGS Aerial layer.

Here you go: http://trackleaders.com/munga20f.php We followed them last year as well..

Congrats with your win Dewald!! I had instant regret not starting with the first batch.. got held up all the way to Waterpoint 1, and back down I caught the 20km traffic.(Not that I would've come close to your time anyways!)

That thing will need something like a car clutch where you would have to stop pedaling, disengage, shift, re-engage.. or a very complicated(propbably unfeasible) ramp system to shift properly. Don't think it will ever get past prototype phase.

Like the live facebook updates they had last year, but even more this time! That would be great, but I think the issue is large portions of where they ride there isn't any cellphone reception to broadcast live. I'd even be happy if they uploaded videos a few hours later when the get into reception, or a recap of the day video.

Wow, I'm actually in shock now! But good shock!! I used to work in Upington/Keimoes area as a Civil Engineer and did quite a few projects with him. When I moved down to Paarl in 2015/2016 it didn't go so well with his health when I left. I since lost contact with him. I actually went by his house quite often, had a few braais there and jetskiing with his son and daughter(they are more my age) in the river in front of their house, but he's never really spoken about taking up cycling(to be fair, me neither back then at almost 50kg heavier than I am now), but I know his son Marius took up cycling. I'm not in contact with him anymore, but I'm so so glad that he is doing so well now!! If you see him or speak to him, please tell him good luck from me!! I'll watch his dot very carefully!

Any relation to Frank du Plessis, the structural engineer from Upington?

I think Benky will take it, but I'd like to see Chris van Zyl win. Thinus Redelinghuys, Chris van Zyl and Sithembiso might keep up for the first day or so. One or two of them might hold on for a bit longer, but I don't expect kumbaja-ing like last year going all the way to Ceres with the new rules in place, someone will drop someone before then. Also no Bainskloof this year to sort out a deadlock, so I think the moves will come early this year. Someone sneaking away while the other is sleeping, or rushing through a CP while the other takes it easy might be the deciding factor. These guys are a lot closer to each other than when Ramses took part and just smashed it from start to finish with no one getting close to him. Hanno Smit had a great Ceres500 at the start of October! 500km, 5000m climbing in 30hrs. I think he might sneak in the Top 5 this year or maybe even a podium spot! Just not sure if his prep was 100% going to plan the last month or so. After Ceres500 had three more solid weeks of training, then two weeks of no cycling, a Top 10 36One, and that was the last ride he had to date. John Ntuli can also always surprise us with a Top 5 ride! Our local Paarl guys whose dots I'll be watching closely this year is Hanno Smit, Henk Gouws(Prep also not 100% to plan, recovering from Covid) and Nelis Swart.

I'm assuming you don't want to lose one of the rides because you get power data from the Wattbike, and HR data from the Garmin? In your Garmin go to indoor cycling settings/sensors and pair the wattbike as a powermeter sensor. Then after an activity only upload your Garmin activity which will now have both power and HR data.

Just picked up a few R399 jerseys and a puffer jacket for R599 on the Ciovita website.

Yes, Bainskloof is closed for all traffic, including cyclists, due to roadworks(until 2022), so they are riding an extra 40km around the mountain to get to the finish line at Doolhof.

Just got one of these little fittings in my gopro bag.. will use it until I get that bridge bracket.

Not entirely what I'm looking for, but that might work with a bit of fidgeting. It's R93 on Takealot, gonna buy one and see if I can make it work, thanks! I have this mount: And what I'm actually looking for is a bracket that is something like this:

So..any hubber's dots we should be watching next week? The 1,5 Bitcoin prize money suddenly doesn't look to shabby! Closing in on a half million ronds. EDIT: DOT WATCHING LINK: http://trackleaders.com/munga20f.php

My feeling is that at the moment they spend too much time developing the game to cater for the pro riders instead of listening to us, the paid user, and fixing the small irritating bugs that has been with us for years. Like how difficult can it be to get the game to exit a ride to the main screen so you can start a new ride, instead of exiting all the way out.

Temps aren't looking too bad for The Race weekend, sub 30 degrees, but a strong headwind predicted

Yep the road scene looks like it's done for the year. I'm back on the MTB for this weekends Flatrock race at Rhebokskloof, then switch into full training mode for Trans Baviaans in January. Will only look at road events after that again.

I'm also looking forward to seeing the Kloof in daylight! Last year was my first and we were hampered by early mechanicals, and one of our guys bonked on the first fang already. The rest of the team sat on top of the second fang watching the sunset while waiting for him to push his bike up.. It was a looooooong night from there!

Nah not necessary at all I think. Last year it was just nice to see your family at a checkpoint in the cold and darkness waiting you in with a hot chocolate, pancake and slap chips.. and for one of the guys in our team that was all that kept him going to the next checkpoint. For January I'm sending a few extra frozen powerbar bidons with my wife to Checkpoint #5 and #7. Last year all the water table powerbar was done by the time we got to Checkpoint #4. Only slightly luke warm water was left. Luckily I had extra bidons in my Checkpoint crates, but in January your crate will basically act as a microwave I think, so not really a nice option to put extra bidons in the crates this time.

Doh!! Funny that thought didn't even come up at any of us at that point.. Friggin amateurs!

Ah yes, and at CP #7 also mandatory. Our wives wants to be part of that whole experience and not just at the finish line, so that's luckily not a problem for us.

Like they say, a spectator is not a supporter. No spectators allowed, but (paid) supporters are allowed at Hadleigh and the finish line. We are a team of 4, and we paid for 4 supporters when we entered in December. All our wives will be going to Hadleigh Pakstoor and the finish as supporters, not as spectators. Unless I somewhere missed that they changed that and only one driver in a support vehicle is now allowed? Then we need to be refunded for the three other supporter entries.. but I doubt that is the case.

This was my first Double Century. A month ago I got invited by an old university mate to join their mixed team, Libra Brokers, from Kimberley. This posed a few challenges from the start, as firstly, I didn't put in the training that I would've if I entered earlier, and secondly, I've never rode with them before and didn't really know what to expect. My wife and I left Paarl on Friday afternoon and we got to Swellendam at 16h30. Booked in at Arumvale Guesthouse, literally 500m from the finish line, with the most amazing views!! The rest of my team coming from Kimberley arrived a bit earlier, checked in at the school hostel, and went for a spin through town. We decided to get together at The Republic at 18:00 to have a few beers, eat something, and obviously discuss some race tactics. This is where I met the team for the first time. Having no clue how the others ride, we said we'd start slow in town, get to the N2, and we'll pretty quickly figure out who is the strong riders. But consensus were that we'd try to have 4 strong guys at the front churning, then the three ladies with two men in between them to protect them till the end, and two guys at the back to help close gaps. Climbs we'll do at the slowest rider's pace so that the strong guys can rest uphill where they can't really give any slipstream, and then hammer it on the downhills and flats where we can benefit most from the stronger guys slipstream. We hoped for a Top 10 mixed team finish, but didn't really set a target time. I quietly hoped for a sub 6hr. Our start time was 06:13.30, so not super early, and getting to our chute was pretty effortless. The team in front of us, wbhoA, didn't make it to the line in time, so we had a pretty big gap to the team that left before us. We took off very easy through town, still snapping pics as we go. Then as we left town we saw that Team Cyberlogic behind us already starting to catch us. A mate of mine was riding for them and I'd never live it down if they caught us that early! Turning onto the N2, I moved to the front with one of the other strong riders in the team to turn up the pace a bit. We got the train going nicely and sat on the front all the way to Tradouws Pass. We caught the first team at the 15km mark just outside Suurbraak. They tried to hang on a bit, but got dropped over the first roller. Second team we caught just before the Suurbraak T towards Tradouws Pass. On Tradouws we kept with our plan to climb at the slowest rider's pace, which seemed to be the correct tactic at the time. Here I caught a nice breather.. Snapped some photos,eat, drink, recover..nature break..all at easy pace, and we caught at least another 5 or 6 teams going up Tradouws. Turning left at Barrydale, we caught two more teams. Regrouped and got the paceline going again at steady pace. A few minutes later we saw a superpack forming with around 5-7 teams a few kilometers up the road in the distance. We decided to burn a few matches here to try and catch that pack where we'd surely get a bit of a breather if we could join them. Caught the superpack pretty quickly with around 10km to go before Op de Tradouw, then realized these guys are not going very quickly. We didn't sit on, and instead just blew past them carrying on with our pace. This is where two of our guys started to struggle a bit. Reaching Op de Tradouw we once again tapped off and climbed at the slowest rider's pace, eat, drink , recover was the plan.. but this time we took turns pushing one of them. The going was slow here and probably burned a few unnecessary matches pushing him over the climb. One or two of the teams we passed at the foot of the climb overtook us again at the top. So we were really going slow now. Getting over the top, we wanted to drive the pace back up again, but the two guys couldn't hang on anymore. We wasted around 10-15min in discussions of what to do, and finally decided we'll have to leave them behind if they can't even keep up anymore on the downhills. In that period of trying to get them back on, the CoroCruisers team passed us three or four times. When we eventually decided to push on, we caught them and a few other teams again. I noticed at around the 85km mark the headwind picking up quite heavily. Caught another team just before entering the neutral zone. Average speed up to this point was 30kmh and on target for a sub 6hr! Even if we'd tried to average 30kmh through the neutral zone, the headwind would've made it impossible. The heat was also starting to catch me, my drinks were done already 10min before we entered the neutral zone. Time for pics and banter again. At the Ashton feeding zone, stocked up on food, downed a bidon on the spot, two new bidons onboard. It was now hot and windy! Handful of chamois cream (Only got my team kit the night before, and the new bib did not work well for me!!). We were just on time to leave the feeding zone when our two dropped riders arrived. Had a quick chat with them whether they wanted to join again, clock started ticking again, and we decided to leave them behind for a second time. Left the feeding zone around 5mins after the clock started ticking again. The few kilometers between Ashton and Robertson was undoubtedly the hardest of the race. Team spirits fell. We were still 8 left in the team, but only me and two other guys were able to take turns up front. The girls were struggling to hang on and we had to drop the pace way down and get the bigger guys in between them to shelter them from the headwind. Once we turned at Robertson with the tailwind the team spirit lifted immediately! We were cruising back towards Swellendam at 50+ kmh! That was proper fun! While we were on that segment with tailwind, our support vehicle turned around to go fetch the two dropped guys that called to say they can't continue in that headwind. We decided to stop at the Rooibrug water table to refill bottles because we were without our support vehicle at that point. Here we caught up with Schmorglebot and his Wannabees team that started 33mins before us. Was nice meeting him in person for the first time! After the Roobrug waterpoint it was the hottest stretch on the road. I measured 44 degrees at one point.. At the Bonnievale feeding zone it was just a quick grab and go as we saw a Sub 6 is still on the cards, but it will be close! Caught two more teams on the next stretch of road. Then 10km after the feeding zone the bad luck struck! There were lines of stones strewn across the road. Not sure if it was kids being naughty, or from support vehicles pulling back onto the road, but one of our ladies punctured. If it was one of the guys, we could've carried on, but we needed her for a mixed team cat finish. Took two attempts to sort out the puncture.. losing another 15-20min trying to fix it with our support car not with us. Got passed again by the Wannabees and several other teams while we were stationary. That was it for us, we knew a sub 6 was out of the window, so we carried on at moderate pace just enjoying the views. Stopped at the Drew waterpoint, took it easy there, and by the time we reached the three sisters I was in complete recovery mode already. The three climbs we did at easy pace I felt, but I think with the heat and the guys from Kimberley not really accustomed to hills, two of them started cramping. They got dropped on the second sister I think. With nothing really left for us to chase, we decided to wait for them just before crossing the finish line. They were two of the stronger guys in the team and did much of the work earlier in the race, so it was nice that they got to go over the line with the rest of us. Our time in the end was 07hrs6min and the 10th Mixed Team across the line! Very proud of the entire team, and made some good cycling mates this weekend! 203km and 11 bidons later...still looking fresh!

Well done! Is that 07:07 before subtracting the neutral zones I assume? We were the 10th mixed team over the line at 07:06 Racetec time. Will post a bit more about our race later, busy packing up in Swellendam..

Yeah I'm also looking for the mount that fits here for the MTB board.