River Rat

Great to hear that I'm sort of on track. I plan to get to about 10- 12 hours, I see you're based in Pretoria where do you guys do your long rides?

Stretch although we're doing the race it's more a case of surviving for me. What are you looking at as a maximum for the week? If I read the advice given here it looks like we need to back to back 80 k rides. That would equate to 10 hrs for these sessions

Here's a question what sort of training are you chaps doing at the moment. I'm doing 9- 10 hours per week with a 4 - 5 hours long ride is this enough?

I'm a canoeist I shoot it on the left!

Anybody know how to get an entry to this race?

Had the chance to try this out today and found it to be quite varied but still needs to be ridden a lot more and I found a lot of hand grenade size rocks on the single track. A further challenge was the fact that I found 14 route markers that had been uprooted and lying in the grass, seemingly vandalism involved. This meant that I had to stop at each flattened marker and work out what it could have indicated. At no stage was I lost as it is very easy to orientate where I was with the monument ever present. The stop start plus the hand grenades does not make this trail synonymous with the term "flowing single track". With all the confusion I managed to get in 16kms when combining the green and blue routes but the map (if you can call it that) suggested 21kms so I obviously got it wrong somewhere. All in all it does give you a good work out with a lot of rough climbs to negotiate but don't expect a consistent ride until you know the track.

What was the winning time for last year's race?

Hey Brian Witkop is correct generally clockwise and please follow the arrows that's why they are there. I too had an incident and fortunately for me and not so fortunate for the other chap is that 95 kgs of quivering passion trumps 70 kg of racing snake. Even if the racing snake knows more expletives he still hit the deck hard.

Anyone know how the cyclists are doing?

Hey Nic, I would just like to compliment you on how you handled this issue, most professional imho. It has certainly made me want to ride Holla Trails next time I'm in KZN. Well done!

And here I thought that what happens on the trail stays on the trail .... oh wait thats Vegas. That does it I'm not going to Vegas with Kamikaze!

Your best option is Saseeding which is good for most Gauteng based races, but the only time you really need it is for the MTN and Nissan series most other races will give you one of their numbers to race with. If you are a newbie I wouldn't worry too much about a series many of these are actually a lot more expensive than the non-series events where you can get great value for money. A good start would be a Babbas Lodge 35km (which also happens to be a series) or the Parys Dirtmax races which are closer to you. Both of these can be found on the Cyclelab website.

@Jeepdude believe me Klint had more than enough oportunity at Sabie not only with myself but with many of his other customers to address the issue. On day two he promised us that things would improve dramatically on which he did not deliver. After that he simply shrugged his shoulders and dismiised our complaints. It might surprise you to note that at one point on the Bike Wash thread I was actually satisfied that he acknowledged his short comings and was going to address it. He blew it somewhat after that but my guess is that he will either learn from this or he won't survive. Many of those big corporates have survived because they confronted that undenialable truth that your service is as good as your customer perception of it. The strange thing is that Powasol not only have a great product but also delivered a great bike wash service to me in the past, I not sure what the hell went wrong at Sabie. But that is the harsh reality of business you're only as good as your last job.

Variety of chip options available. www.saseeding.co.za seems to be the best especially if you want to do the MTN or Nissan series go to www.advendurance.co.za for these. MiWay is a different series can't tell you too much about these as I think they are more KZN based.

Roag = Club North Gauteng = Province This would be dependent on where you live. My guess is that yours is Central Gauteng. CSA = National Body Follow this route for the cheapest option www.roag.co.za for club membership. www.cyclingsa.co.za for province and national membership.

I have just done this and my cost (So Far!) Roag Renewal R57-00 CSA Licence ( First option) R75-00 Gauteng North Cycling ( Affiliation Fee done done via CSA Website)R25-00 Total R157-00

@Drongo I can see the principle to your view and although I personally don't always follow it it does make sense. However, I do get the feeling that we going to see more and more complaints lodged on the web before the business owner is aware of it ( Holla Trails a case in point and not because the OP hadn't tried at least by phone). This is going to make our lives as businessmen quite interesting as we try to anticipate how one should deal with this phenomenon.

Got you and this is the dilemma I can't envisage sufficient traffic to justify this.

In both the the threads mentioned an attempt was made to address the issue directly with the service provider. I can attest to the Powasol one as not only I but a number of unhappy customers tried to address it with them. None more vocal than the Sabie lite bunch at the start of stage 2 where we were promised better service that day only to get a nonchalant dismissal later when nothing changed. What does interest me though is NicJ's response on the Holla thread where he welcomed the engagement and the opportunity to put things right. The question for me is how many people would have bothered to use the direct route? I suspect far fewer than those that used the opportunity to air their views on the web. So from a service providers point of view I would not receive the same amount of information if the direct route custom prevailed. As a manager I'm not sure if I'm happy with that as I would prefer to have as many inputs as possible as to how my business is performing, this provided that it is real and I guess that maybe where the problem lies. But I have seen enough evidence of people springing to the defence of the service provider if they feel the criticism is not legit.

Let me start by declaring my interest here. The company I work for has recently decided to give our website a makeover. To do this we have engaged the services of a brand consultant and obviously a web designer. The big debate is whether we should have a facebook page or not. Our company exports about 75% of what we do and we do not sell directly to the public so our feeling is there is no real value in having a facebook page. But our brand consultant and web designer are challenging our thoughts in this regard. The logic that they put forward is that as soon as you use the Internet as an advertising medium this becomes a legitimate form of communication in both directions. The choice you have is whether you wish to provide the general public a platform to raise their issues or not. When it comes to complaints our company is no different to any other in that we need to know what people think about us and the important thing here is not so much whether they are right or not but what their perception is because after all this is your brand. The most convincing argument is that while in the past word of mouth was your brand the electronic reflection of your brand is now the prevailing one. The argument goes deeper you either engage in this by using it to assess and address the perception of your brand or you let it drift in the ether (at your peril they say!). This brings me to the Hub where there have been numerous threads where Hubbers complain about their negative experiences with service providers. We have a mixed bag of responses here with some using the OP's platform to put the boot in, others defending the service provider because their own positive experience has led to some brand loyalty. However, the response that intriques me most is the one that says that you are not entitled to raise the issue on the Hub unless you personally spoken to the service provider directly. This would seem to suggest that a complaint should be dealt with offline, now this might work if everybody did this. But as my consultants tell me those customers that don't have a platform or the relative protection of the anonymity that the web provides will revert to word of mouth with others to voice their complaint. This would mean that as a business you are not only unaware of what is being said about you but you are also unable to address this directly. I am keen to hear from you what you view is.

I ride a Spes Epic Comp 29er I'm not sure if it is the same model you have in mind but I'm really enjoying it. I don't know the weight or price of the 2012 model.It handles really well once you get used to the fact that it is a 29er. The brain is also a fantastic piece of kit that ensures that you have a great allrounder that is well suited to marathon riding.

Would be if he read the thread properly and realised that there was no overnight security, in fact no security at all, you're bike was at risk from the moment it entered the pound unless you kept an eye on it. But I guess some people will continue to shoot from the hip until they shoot themselves in the foot!

@JCMeyer would you like the facts or would you like to stay in a blissful ignorance?

I look forward to seeing how you respond to this at the next race. Good Luck with your business!

Thanks Guys. More or less what I expected.