Li Mu Bai

Pity about the Ride4Sight clash, and this event now falls outside the Schools mid-term break.

You are fortunate, its getting more expensive each year. Air-ticket Accommodation Lottery entry fee (sweating the result as air-tickets are pre-bought) bike transport car rental petrol food family souvenirs expo "nice-to-haves" but, smelling the fresh early morning misty cliffs air - priceless

System glitch?

enjoyed the race, the pace in VB was intense as is to be expected. Poor road surface on stage 1, so had to be careful. had some scary descending after Spitzkoppe into Sabie with my bike skipping around on the last corner at 81km/h. stops were good, no problem with the golf course. food organization was much better than before. climbed well and shed 18mins off previous time last year = satisfied my only gripe: The Staffie "Jock" medal was a great touch last year. Missed that bit of attention to detail this time round.

I hope Daryl didnt get the Apple Watch...

Good for you.

no sms for me either...

Then you are "Gaming" / manipulating their system. and the reason they changed everything. But one has to do what one has to do when crying to deaf ears...

The issue is that everyone's heart rates are different. You may well get 300, 600 or 1500 points for your 100km ride, but 112km rides for me including 1750m of climbing and 3 sets of criss cross intervals only earns 100 points. Why? - because I am FIT and recover extremely quickly, and my heart beats extremely low - the above 4 hour example I average 119bpm. Everyone is different. Something Discovery Vitality doesnt understand, or doesnt care to admit because of the extra work it would cause them...

Need Active rewards topay off the dumb watch.

Just looking at all this nonsense and constant email war, Isnt it time we boycotted the Active Rewards Program, and stopped sending in any info at all? At least until its fixed, and they have made revisions to include endurance activities and Heart Rate Anomalies? We all keep feeding this Troll, but Discovery Vitality is no where without the information they are milking from us for their acturies day in and day out. Surely all this admin isnt worth a free smoothie?

Yup got the 2 kids assessed online and the missus does her vitality check. With the 30000 from races we just squeak in. I guess now it will be adding in the costs for the biokineticist for both of us and the nutritionist too. Kids don't actually score much point wise. In the end this mess just costs us more and more.

I have to get 90000 points for a family of 4 for Gold. Relying on the 30000 for cycle races made it doable once all the assessments and online stuff was done. With my heart rate earning me only 100 points on a good day, and sometimes 300 points at a race, with Discoverys selective race list I am going to fall far short What's easy for some isn't for others.

Still amazes me the Colossal backfire this has become. Discovery Vitality wanted to stop some individuals who were "gaming" their system. So instead of weeding them out and banning them with a little detective work they changed their entire system. Poorly thought through and put together, I shudder to think how many emails, complaints, moans, queries they now have to deal with day after day, after effectively painting all their clients as cheats. The actual cheats merely get more creative at bucking the new system, and the active energetic fit people just get disgruntled, annoyed, frustrated at all the added admin, with the result that they start considering moving away to the competitors schemes. Discovery, chronic fail in my opinion. My fun starts as soon as they raise my goal above 700. My heart rate beats so low naturally that I have to go close to full out to reach 140bpm. Just crazy. I think selling the watch makes the most sense, and paying off Apple. At least then not reaching goals wont cost me. Who needs smoothies anyway. I have no idea how I'm going to get back to GOLD next year.

that looks better. lost my Sahmurai plugger at Van Gaalens. it just works itself loose and falls out, quite frustrating for an expensive item. I ride with 2 pluggers, one on each side, both preloaded with the sticky plugs so that they are ready to go if I puncture. Punctured 3 times at Sabie this year so this works well, because pulling the sticky fat plug through the plugger is fiddly and time wasting. The reamer has always been quite useless. If the hole is big enough for the sealent not to plug, then its big enough to receive the plug without first wasting 1minute making the hole "smoother"

Sorry to hear about the accidents. VG is always a real test. Hard race but my SC Highball followed the right lines. Really enjoyed the satellite single track, great riding and happy that old turned rock decent was gone. Bridge was rather disappointing. It was too perfect. I think that half sinking feeling if you don't keep the cadence up and water spraying off your rear tire is what makes floating bridges special, fun and scary. This one was like riding the highway! Well organized as always enjoyed it much more than in the past. Happy to have knocked off 30mins in the marathon.

results have been updated, but Max's winning time remains. its going to mess up everyones seeding index if it stays sub 2

Max could get a Sub2 - he is a climbing Beast. the climbs were rideable. The rest very fast as the sand was wet and not loose. I hope the timing gets resolved, I imagine somebody at SAS has a very full inbox

Yup. But they missed mine. Sigh. More emails.

Great event as always, and riding the route back to front was a welcome change.

HIIT intervals count for nothing over the whole workout if warm up and cool down phases are included. You can do 80% if the data you submit to discovery only includes your time above 80% - all their algorithm is interested in is the average. Thus, the result is more manipulation of workouts, exactly what they are trying to avoid. And heaven help you if you beat much lower than the 220-age nonsense.

Nope, Discovery wont take back any watches. Discovery say the contract is with the user and APPLE, not them. Discovery are merely facilitating a process. So returning the watch means you have to pay your way out of the deal.

Problem is this: for an active and fit individual (such as Nathrix) and most of us here, having a changing goal will inevitably become unobtainable pretty quickly. Being fitter, it takes a lot more effort to get your heart rate up, and your recovery time (on a flat or downhill) is very quick. Discovery only accept the AVERAGE heartrate for an entire activity, and will not accept any proof of being over 80% heartrate for 30minutes or however many minutes you are over 80%, in a 4 hour road/mtb ride. No one here will ride at 80% average for 3-4 hours. you would have to blixem it at 110-120% to make up for the flats and downhills when you spin out. And thinking of Pamela Anderson to get you HR up on the downhills wont help much either! So if you warm up prior to a hectic interval, and the cool down afterwards correctly, you are negating the efforts of your "hectic interval" and must remain happy with scoring a massive 100 points. The same as if you merely sat and had a coffee whilst watching aerobics at the Gym. Discovery also only accept one activity per day. With only receiving 100 points for an activity, once the goal gets lifted to 600 or 700 points, we end up having to train 6-7 times a week, can everyone do this? What about recovery time, so vital to our training programs? When the goal randomly changes to 800, we are well and truly f....d, and can start expecting the watch bill in the post. The discovery system suits big fat lazy unfit execs whose heart-rates are crazy high and who are close to cardiac arrest the moment they roll out of bed in the morning, not those who actually give a damn about their fitness. And we wonder why there is so much subversion and creative manipulation of the data sent to Discovery and the system as a whole... it all just sucks as much as the watch's poor battery life...

Not really. David Millar has been trying to clean up his act and give back to the sport.

Thats really sad. I thought he had retired from elite racing.