Sid the Sloth

Vastly different events - both have their place but you get a lot more out of desolation than you do out of canola. Both are amazing events I will attend next year but you don’t quite get a free community dinner afterwards, a stacked goodie bag, pre race social rides and opportunities, post race support, professional photography, etc. follow vehicles, all of which come at a cost as you’re obviously well aware. And the quantity of people entering canola make the economies of scale way better than a tiny race very far from anywhere else. I’m sure the profit generated from canola isn’t too shabby running the numbers on total revenue with sold out entries this year. To my knowledge Desolation barely breaks even having chatted to a lot of people involved - it’s a true passion project drawing together our cycling community and the Graaf Reinet community Hopefully the international classification attracts more riders as it’s easily one of my top 5 SA races having done most of the local gravel over the last two years.

Unfortunately for me it’s become increasingly hard to win these races without a team, other strong individuals do not want to contribute to chasing so you have to make sure you get in the right move with the right composition of riders from teams. I had a few options to try and get it right but unfortunately they didn’t pan out. Nice work @DieselnDust for a solid result. From Botmanskloof onwards the convoy and lead moto played a massive role (negatively) in the race as they continually gave draft to either the bridging group or the main bunch after almost every effort to get away. There are also videos on social media of riders making it back through the convoy after Bots, which happens pretty much every time we have done that climb in a race in my 3 years of racing that climb. It basically became a pointless exercise attacking as cars or the moto would bring everything back together, and the rest of the race was history. I played one of my cards attacking with 2km to go as I didn’t want to contest that extremely risky right hander onto paving sprint for 150m and luckily it panned out as I was allowed a gap.

I’m glad I get to train with him, pushes the level up nicely. And always fun encouraging him to ignore @J Wakefield😜

just tell him to hang cable and don’t think about it. Easy.

Are you using a narrow-wide chainring? It helps with chain retention, other than that chain length and derailleur spring tension are pretty important - I am running 1x on my road and gravel and have noticed it’s exceptionally responsive to these things. Hope you come right.

ironic that the event organizer is a marketing lecturer at Stellenbosch… if I remember correctly.

The best I can do is roll a 56

It’s pretty crazy, even running events with much lower entry fees have way better prize money.

If I recall correctly, 100 Miler prize money doesn’t even break even with the entry 🤣

What’s the cash prize looking like for the 12h?

Yoh I bailed hard so hard. Still hurting.

Yo @Furbz if you haven’t come right swing me a message, if you still have my number from last year?

Might be able to help you out as those wheels are now using the xdr. I’ll let you know when I get in to work tomo

Same weekend as Ceder

I will cry tears of joy if they turn this into a road race for elites. I dream of 5h races and stage races where the longest stage is over 4h and 2000m vert. DC as a road race would be my happy place.