TyronLab

Wow! Look, gutted for Benky, but props to AZ, especially catching up and eventually passing in the early hours of the morning. That's the absolute worst/toughest time to be riding in ultra races, your body is screaming at you that you should be sleeping. Running on fumes and then pushing that hard that you overtake a top class rider like Benky requires herculean mental fortitude. Maaaaaan, I'm properly lus to try this next year. I mean, it's just like riding the Grit.... five times on repeat 😅 jirre, even at my Grit pace this would take me 10.5 days... 🤯

Yeah man. I've been getting into CX on YouTube and it looks fun as balls. Very much something you could do with a couple of mates and family for fun on a Saturday morning/evening. Keep it short, with a couple of heats maybe and not one long race (similar to Rallycross). Considering the vast majority of MTB-ers in GP don't even want to get their MTBs muddy ever, I somehow doubt they'd want to "abuse" their road bikes. Still, could be a really fun time.

I genuinely don't see the point of the vast majority of road races. So you need to pay a R450+ entry to ride on roads that you can ride at any time for free, on routes that are also boring as hell (a number of races in GP are literally a handful of turns and gigantic, never-ending straights between them), on roads are still open to traffic (so no safety benefit). Everyone in every bunch is somehow racing their balls of for 300th place making it if anything less safe than just riding that boring ass loop on your own. What's the value prop here? The guys that do all of the local races are the same toppies that never miss a morning club ride and ride to do a sub-3 100km ride and are the only ones that give a ballsack about their times, every ****** year. For schmoe's like me I genuinely can't see the point. The 947 is the only road ride I enter and look forward to, as you can't (well, shouldn't) ride on the M2 and Kyalami just on a random weekend. It's also an experience, with crowds and supporters and music etc. I don't give a crap what my time is, it's just a lekker thing to go and do with my wife on our tandem. Then again, the same can be said for a lot of MTB races. I only enter something that I can't go and do whenever I want to, or that's somehow special in some way (Transbaviaans, Munga Grit). Same reason I'd never go to a restaurant and eat Spaghetti Bolognaise. I can make that **** at home. Back to the topic - How about rethinking road rides as Events, and not Races. Make it something that's cool to do, just to say you did it, and make the "competition" more social. Maybe I'm out of the loop, but I don't see any hillclimbs / crit's / parking garage races / wheelie competitions / single speed specific / racetrack races happening.

Wow, averaging 20km/h this far into an Ultra, in the hillier part of the course, is flippen amazing. Major props to him.

+1 for Jewbacca's sentiment here. Fo' shizzle, having an extra hand position where you can lock out your arms and not have to use your core or arm muscles are a godsend on ultra long events. Especially when you can switch which part of your hand/arm is providing support. The simple fact that these allow you to use your thumb/hand interface and not the middle of your palm provides a hell of a lot of relief. Have a look at the vast majority of ultra riders, they'll most likely have at least three grip options. I'd say 3/4 entrants in the Munga Grit had a set of spir grips / togs / innerbarends or normal bar ends in addition to tri bars for this very reason. After 36 hours any worry you have about looking cool goes flying out of the window and anything that makes moving forward easier is the priority.

Chapter Two With the quiet confidence of a man that thinks he can pull off a laced linen shirt and white moccasins I sipped on a coke, listening to the race briefing on Friday morning. When the race director asked “who’s doing this for the first time today?” I revelled in my lack of needing to meekly raise my hand. It was already a balmy 34°C in the shade according to the Garmin (not that I’d been smart enough to check at the time) and by the time we set off it reported a peak of 40°C and didn’t dip below 30°C until the sun kissed the horizon, five hours and 80km later. By the time I reached Water Point 1, 75km in, I was “paperye” as my son would put it. My heart was doing an ecstasy fuelled samba, I was nauseous, my head was throbbing, my mouth was drier than British comedy and my internal battery had been syphoned completely by the unrelenting sun turning the North West into an oven. Luckily, as dusk turned to twilight and the first evening’s riding set in, I could feel the battery getting a jolt of juice with every dropping Centigrade. The Python had taken its first swipe, and my complete lack of heat acclimatisation was alarmingly apparent. The sky, and the temperature drop, were equally gorgeous. Fortunately the Mars-like weather also meant that there was none of the motivation-and-bike-destroying mud from ‘21, the PTSD it inflicted still burning in my soul as a vivid memory. The now-hardened knee deep trenches made by overconfident Hilux tyres, leading to a tractor tyre’s chevron imprint was now the physical memory of an emasculating call for rescue from unexpectedly treacherous mud. The buzz I got from arriving at Water Point 2 close to midnight, 187km done, more than two hours earlier than last time (and not crying) relegated the afternoon’s heat to a long-forgotten anomalous occurrence. The road there had not been without peril, as I discovered at JoJo 2 (midway between Waterpoint 1 and 2) that my downtube bottle cage had snapped (whodathunk that a random bottlecage I found in my spares bin wouldn’t be military grade). Luckily, the trusty zip tie came to the rescue. Another tug (similar to the one upon installation) gave me a sliver of confidence that it would hold my precious Powerbar bottle in place for the rest of the ride. It didn’t. The Powerbar bottle was once again donated to veld whence it came at some or other point before water point 2, and I was back to carrying my third bottle in my jersey pocket. I like to think of that Powerbar bottle as the mountain biker’s version of the Travelling Pants, being passed along by fate to those who might need it most at the time, although much likelier to give you a stomach bug. Spot the zip tie

Chapter One “One-thing-leading-to-another” stories seems to be a recurring theme in my existence. I blame it on a particularly unsafe mix of optimism, curiosity, and disregard for personal wellbeing. All of this started with an innocuous Google Photo memory. “One Year Ago” the enigmatic notification read. It led to a photo of my previous bike (RIP sweet Thunderhorse) all kitted up for the ‘21 Grit. In a moment of reminiscing I sent it to the friend that got me the sponsored entry previously, jokingly captioned “Can’t believe it was a year ago already! You wouldn’t happen to be hiding another entry in your back pocket would you? :)”. What I got in reply was a screenshot of an email, sent 15 minutes earlier, of her boss asking her if there were any sponsor entries for this year’s race, as their regular sponsored riders were preparing for the Wines to Whales and wouldn’t be riding. An hour later I received my registration email from the Munga team. “Wel, daar gat jy!” I at least did some preparation by buying a new bag and front light. I’d be damned if I was going to ride with only that piddly little headlamp light again, fool me once cheapo Marvel light (well, technically, it died in the Transbaviaans too, so fool me TWICE, BUT NOT THRICE!). I also went on one Grit-specific training ride, but seeing that it was only a 80km dawdle bisected by a few beers with friends it was hardly bootcamp. Tennisball in Munga-Grit guise. I evidently have a thing for South African steel bikes. The Python emerged from the tree line for the first time during this training ride however. The aforementioned pause mid-ride, and related adult beverages, led to me riding home much later than I normally would, in the sizzling heat of the late morning. A wiser man would have seen the correlation between the slightly elevated temperature I was riding in, my state of unexpected suffering, and the upcoming weekend’s forecasted heat wave, and would have started ringing the alarm bells. All my hunk of grey matter could muster was “man, drinking beer and riding bikes at the same time is an awful idea!”. Idiot. The only other planning I did was decide to carry the yellow Powerbar bottle I picked up in the previous Grit (unused since) as a good luck charm. It had been a gift from the course after losing a bottle last time, and I would return it to its motherland for a scenic thank you tour to it and the universe. I decided to re-use the strap-on bottle cage mount that caused my original bottle to get flung into the countryside last time, this time mounting it under the downtube and using a velcro strap to secure the bottle to it. A vigorous shake post-installation was the extent of my testing. “Solid” I thought.

Introduction Being in the (un)fortunate position of having worked in heavy industry and mining for my entire career, safety has unwaveringly, often begrudgingly, been touted as the top priority. Queue a deluge of infographics, box ticking surveys, and reenactment videos even Verimark would cringe at using. A safety risk factor universal to every corporate policy I’ve had to wade through is complacency, or in some more visceral depictions, The Python. “While it lies in wait, you may walk past it numerous times, you may even see it, but ignore it due to it not seeming to pose an immediate risk until WHAM, it strikes!” an underappreciated and underpaid thespian proclaims voicing over a PowerPoint animation of lightning striking a stick figure. “Meh” I’d always grumble mid-video, “how dof do these people think I am?”. In 2021’s rendition of the Grit I was so laughably out of my depth, so wholly unprepared (even disregarding the horrendous conditions), that before that race I stared into its jaws and saw nothing but a dimly lit cavern filled with Vipers, fraught with danger. Every meter past the 250km mark was a personal achievement. Needless to say, when this year’s rodeo rolled around I was feeling somewhat confident. What I knew for a fact was: It was at least possible for me to finish it, even though I had previously done so with only 18 minutes to spare before the cutoff having turned myself inside out to do so. I had an actual mountain bike this time, although I was still foregoing any form of suspension (and sanity, judging by my fellow Mungrel’s comments). There was no rain predicted, so no Satan’s-underpants mud to contend with. I had one full extra week of notice before the start (that’s 50% more than last time), and had at least somewhat prepared for my trundle through the Transbaviaans in August. Theoretically this would grant me some form of fitness. Hell, I decided to not even take the Monday after the race off. Why bother? I’d breeze through the race, have the whole Sunday to chill at home, and arrive triumphant to work on Monday to rake in the adulation of my peers. Winner winner chicken dinner. The Munga Python was hiding in the grass, betwixt my feet, giggling it’s hungry little arse off, licking its lips in anticipation. I had further, for some reason, set myself the random goal of finishing < midnight on Saturday. More on that later.

You can find some pre-race chatter here: I started compiling this year's ride into a story, but I ran out of steam a bit. It was in some ways easier, and in some ways harder, than last year's ride. I finished way more comfortably (47 hours and some change) with a lot of naps. I'll post the first few (still rough) bits here. If anyone's interested in more I'll write the rest.

I can only give you some of my personal experience and context. I bought a tandem for the vrou and I 18 months ago as something fun we can do together. We're very compatible, but both pretty strong willed, so not exactly the easiest tandem partners but far from the worst. I ride a fair amount, she does a little but is still a beginner (not that comfortable standing when off road, doesn't take the bottle out and drink while riding). We got going and rode just fine the first time with a few small mishaps. I'd say after ride 5 we were pretty smooth everywhere, and now ~20+ rides in we're a well oiled machine. Some general tips: 1. Communicate, communicate, communicate. The only time you don't need to communicate is when you're cruising along at a constant speed. Other than that, you should be communicating constantly. Cadence changes, gear changes, braking, accelerating, turning, calling our bumps, having a drink, communicate EVERYTHING. 2. Share the responsibility. The captain has all of the control of the bike so I make all the calls for gear selection and take care of riding the bike with no influence or say from the stoker. In our case the stoker (my wife) makes all of the navigation and effort decisions with no influence or say from me. This doesn't need to apply to everyone, but you want to avoid anything that can cause an argument. Having clear boundaries and limiting "negotiation" on the bike works for us. 3. Communicate. 4. Only one person rides the bike really. The stoker should pretty much just pedal and enjoy themselves. Since both you and your wife ride solo this might be a challenge. Two cooks in the kitchen spoil the broth. 5. Communicate. 6. "No matter which direction your relationship is going, a tandem will get you there faster" is a fact. For us, we almost always return from a ride beaming, relaxed, happy and connected. It can very easily not be that (we have both cried and had a huge argument on one particular tumultuous ride, the 947 nogals). Good luck, and get ready for just about every human out there to shout "Lekker Tandem!" or my wife's favourite "She's not pedaling hey" at you.

*Friday mode, ENGAGED!* If you think your statement and mine are in line then I must have misworded my post. I've bought and sold my last four bikes narrowing down which one bike is going to be my quiver killer. I love having one bike that maximizes fun for all of the riding I do, which is split between quick roadie group rides, techy MTB trails and ultra-distance gravel / off road rides. I think gravel bikes are the exact opposite of a fatbike. Fat bikes are made with a very specific niche in mind - riding through snow or sand. Unless you live somewhere it's particularly sandy or cold they suck a lot of the time. Gravel bikes, for temperate climates and mostly sedate trails like we have in JHB, are an awesome compromise / quiver killer. They're still fun to ride on the road, they're crazy fun off road if you aren't fussed about speed, they're low maintenance (no suspension) and pretty robust due to a lot of MTB components being used. As an aside, I love how pissy everyone gets whenever a new gravel / ebike release pops up. Sure, critique the subjective bits like it's a funny colour or that horrible stem on that Bianchi. But as an actual product? Nobody is forcing anybody to buy this thing, they just made it. If you don't like it, don't buy it.

I'm in the same camp as you. This is more an alternative to a suspension seatpost than a rear shock, but with the benefit of your saddle-to-pedal distance not changing when the "suspension" is compressed and the fact that it's damped (i.e. no bouncy bouncy like suspension posts). It's a niche within a niche, and somewhere someone is going "yes, finally, the bike I've always wanted!" and awesome for them. I also don't think it's meant for schmoes like us, it's for the pointy-end-of-the-field bro's looking for marginal gains. From a design engineer's perspective, I feel (and it looks) like this is still one or two iterations away from being the best solution though. It feels like they pulled the trigger on production while it was still a squibbly drawing on a whiteboard (especially considering the faff with the multiple posts etc). If I had a larger pit of money that Niner would for shizzle be in my garage. Riding weird looking gravel bikes in places where people go "Why would you do that, a mountain bike would be way faster and more comfortable!" is my thing.

Oh, and to add to that, I'd always recommend choosing a gravel bike with as much tyre clearance as possible. You can always choose to run narrower, but there's nothing you can do about its tyre clearance ceiling.

I'd always vote for choosing a bike on factors that you can't change. Tyre clearance, standards used (BB / Through Axle vs. QR, disc vs. rim, flat mount vs post mount), warranty/support, and geometry/fit are fixed and are either impossible or impractical to change. Choose the bike based on that. Groupsets, tyres, saddles, wheels etc. can always be changed / customized to suit your application for less money and faff. Drivetrain in particular, don't choose a bike based on drivetrain (especially a bike intended for off road use) because it's a consumable component.

Thanks for that! What's the chainstay's design like? Considering running two wheelsets (a 700cx43 or 45 and a 650B with MTB tyres - biggest I can fit), so what would the clearance be like with a 650B wheel?

*casts thread resurrection spell* So, on their site Momsen claim that this bike can run 29 x 2.1 MTB tyres? Anyone have any experience with the tyre clearance on this bike? If that's the case, I might be interested in one. Any experiences or photos much appreciated.

Will you be bringing the whole range in, or just select SA-specific models?

For some context, I'm currently helping my fifth newbie (wife, brother in law, friend, now cousin+wife) get into cycling. For our first ride together (my wife, cousin and his wife and I) went for a ride. They bring two "good" Makro bikes and I bring my normal MTB and my wife's cheapo Trek MTB. After 2.5km we swap bikes, for fun, and they go "ja nee *** this is so much better". Don't buy a Makro bike dude. You can spend a smidge more on a second hand proper MTB that won't fold in half, and if you don't dig it you can sell it and not lose money. Ideally you can pick up one that's the right size for you (should be a L/XL depending on brand), and seems to have been maintained. Rather buy a "shittier" well-maintained bike than a "higher-spec" poorly maintained bike. More context - I also bought my first grootmens mountainbike in 2018 only wanting to get some exercise in, because I loved tootling around my neighbourhood on my BMX when I was a teenager, and because I had a small tax return burning a hole in my pocket. No plans other than that. Yet here I sit, having smooshed myself riding 512km in a weekend in one go at the Munga Grit (again). You don't plan an obsession, it just, kinda, happens...

I'm a simple man. I see a Scout, I smash Like.

First test ride with the new kit. Taking it on a proper long test tomorrow. I'm really surprised by what this handlebar bag can swallow. I've got a multitool, pump, tyre repair kit, and 20,000mah powerbank in it, and looks like there's enough space to stow my jacket and arm warmers in there too. Might do that, then I can lose the rucksack completely.

Ordered one of these (the large black one). Should be receiving it tomorrow. Really excited to get my paws on it and see how much I can cram into it. Picked this up yesterday, and (so far) I'm really impressed. Way higher quality than the price would indicate. The beam has a sharp cut-off at the horizon, which is ideal for not blinding oncoming traffic/pedestrians/gazelles, and has quite a wide distributed throw below that. For its quoted lumen output of 1000lm it's not far off my "2200lm" Marvel Blast, which I now realize has a very vague round blorb of light. Fit and finish seems really good too. The fact that it has an aluminium mount that's split and bolts together is a big bonus. I was trying to knock it out of place on purpose this morning (hucking a rigid bike to flat on rock hard tyres is the best I could do) and it didn't move a micron. Did a battery test (rode alternating between the brightest and dimmest setting) and left it in the sun and the cupboard on the dimmest setting, which would be more than adequate for Grit type riding, got about ~7 hours total out of it. Charged up to 100% capacity from the powerbank in ~3.5 hours, so with running it off the powerbank and charging in the day I should have more than enough juice for two full nights. As an aside, I've mounted a 3rd bottle below the downtube, threw on my bodged innerbarends, and building excitement with every hour that passes. Doing a full gear test later this week, and this weekend, then it's off to the "races" so to speak!

I've considered these, the add-on one seems like a good solution for an additional hand position. The integrated one has no rise and pretty much no backsweep, so unless you ride very hunched over and in the attack position all the time that just sounds like sore wrists/shoulders to me.

Thanks for the suggestions everyone. I think this ⬆️ little oke could be the winner winner chicken dinner. I had a Rockbros framebag, and the zip got stuck and subsequently broke on night one. Had to use one of the straps to try and keep it closed as best I could. Reference below (excuse my grubby feet, but after 40 hours of wet/sandy socks I was very over shoes). It's a pity this dude is adventuring at the moment, if it wasn't for that I'd totes order one of them. They're pretty slick looking! At the moment my packing strategy is looking like it'll be: Handlebar bag: Powerbank. Tools/spares. Pump. Bars. Light/small backpack (that I got as a part of the goody bag in last year's Grit): Jacket. Arm warmers. Medikit. Spare headlamp batteries. Idea is to keep the backpack as light as possible so that it doesn't annoy/chafe. Unfortunately with my frame's layout fitting a frame bag and two bottles in the triangle doesn't work. I can mount one of the bottles below the downtube or on the fork with my bottle mount adapter (pictured on the seatpost above), but I'll still need space for a third one or I'll need to buy a framebag that's big enough to take a 1.5L bladder (also still an option) and still be able to fit what I'm planning to put in the handlebar bag.

So, it seems I've once again gotten ridiculously lucky with an entry into the Munga Grit Cradle 17 days before the start gun fires. The universe loves and hates me equally it seems. From my previous experience I'm looking for some help with the following two equipment needs I have: 1. Light. I ran out of battery on night #2 during the last one (and at the Transbaviaans this year) forcing me to ride with a poepie headlamp. It was not pleasant. I'm looking for a light that I can charge off of a normal USB powerbank while its operating. Doesn't need to be like the sun as a lot of the route is just gravel road. Seeing as I don't do stuff like this every day I'm not that keen on spending a few grand on Extreme Lights batteries that'll sit in the cupboard for 90% of their lives when I already have a 20,000 mAh powerbank I'll be carrying. 2. Bags. My previous Rockbros frame bag worked in the traditional Scout frame, but there's too little space in the triangle for it and two bottles in the STR. It also has a borked zip from the previous Grit. I generally ride with spares and food in jersey pockets and don't own a saddle bag, but seeing as I need to carry batteries, lots more food, and a jacket etc I need some storage. I was considering a handlebar bag, but the cycling specific ones I'm finding are rather spendy. DIY / Bodge / Hack recommendations welcome. Sending me a link to a R2500 Apidura bag will be wasting your and my time. As far as navigation, I borrowed a buddy's Garmin 530 last time but I feel a bit sleg doing it again. Considering just using my phone for navigation. Cutting four holes in a square pattern in a rigid phone case and cable tying that to my stem is a method I've used with some success previously.

A bike as unique and rad as that deserves a rider that wears a jersey to suit 😁 Both impeccable.