River Rat

There you go reorientated already

Just to add, if you dare mention that it was easy again we'll have to hunt you down and reorientate you

Fritz I don't care what your paper says, it was tough full stop.

I saw this happen and to be fair to the ladies (both fron Tzaneen Cycling Club if I have correct) it was very difficult to anticipate the right gear as the bridge was not visible when you crossed the Sabie river. As spectators we did two things, one was to get the chicken run opened up and the second was to warn the riders as soon as possible of the correct speed or to take the chicken run. Happily fewer falls after this but I do think that it was a rather difficult set of circumstances with a river bridge followed by a steepish incline, S bend and a wooden bridge with spectator pressure. I hope Dot recovers soon as she seemed to be in a lot of pain with what looked like a dislocated shoulder.

I hope his result was wiped clean!

Listening to the comments on the day you wouldn't believe this. The guys around me at the 58 km mark would have lynched the organisers ( if they could muster the strength ). The same guys just about kissed the people at the last waterpoint and absolved them of all blame only to take up the tirade 2 kms later. It was entertaining and it helped get the kays done, but in the end they were only too relieved to be finished although one chap refused his to take his medal in protest at the thoughness of the course. I think he may be regretting this today!

Definetly one of the toughest days in endurance events I've experienced. Luckily I entered the Sabie as a training ride for Sani and I never pushed it otherwise it would have been a lot tougher had I pushed at any point. Those hat pushed on the early climbs really suffered later on.

Thanks Driewiel. Have tried contacting Stu on email but no reply. I guess we will have to be patient until the site opens

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.