Have to be more headstrong than fit. 1) Nutrition, keep snacking on proper food. Leave the Gu's and other crap at home. It won't carry you through the kloof. I use an Ironman style food box on the toptube behind the stem for my snacks. You don't want to have to break your arm off to dig stuff out of the back pockets, and most def not have to stop to get stuff out of your Camelback if you are so inclined. Salticrax, sugar covered fruits, etc. There are checkpoints where you can leave things for yourself to pick up on the route. Start the race with a small plastic packet in which you have all the snacks you think you'll need till the next checkpoint. When you reach the checkpoint, check in, remove the entire plastic packet and both your bottles even if they still have juice in them. Go get your dropbox and get out two fresh bottles and also a fresh snack pack. Replace these items on your bike and you are good to roll again. If you eat too much crap, you WILL throw up 170km into the race. 2) NEVER get too comfortable at checkpoints - it makes it so much harder to get going again. At the checkpoint at the base of Never Ender Climb, its easy to get sucked in by the fire and family trying to be overly nice. Do what you got to do and roll out of there. Hitting the climb with cold stiff legs won't help you at all. 3) Water crossings - You will always find those, doesn't matter if its rainy or not. You might be tempted to, but there is NO reason to bomb through the water crossings at full speed. WTF for, you just wash the lube off your chain and get yourself soaking wet. Each year we just gently roll through the water trying to get as little water on the bike as possible - and every year there is one mother effer that has to go 20km faster than everyone else causing a tsunami over everyone. If the group you are in "drops" you going through the water, you can gently roll back up to them within 30 seconds. You are dry, they are dripping. 4) Pack a warm top and leave it at the top of Bergplaas. If you are reasonably fit, you should make it there before dark. Leave a small windbreaker at the checkpoint before Bergplaas incase you don't get there in time. Same goes for lighting. I always start with a helmet light already fixed to my helmet. You might look like a tool but its not about style on the day. In this helmet light I use 4x AAA batteries, which are in AAA -> AA converters. This makes the light superlight on your head and it doesn't bother you. IF **** hits the fan and you are caught in the dark, at least you have 2-3 hours of light on your head to make it to a checkpoint. We then always leave our big lights at Bergplaas. Here you can also quickly swap out the AAA batteries for proper AA's. Heavier, but you'll have good light on your head all the way to the finish. Good idea because you 1) Don't want to lug batteries up that climb if you don't need to, and 2) when you do Bergplaas's decent, you are dropping into the mountain's shadow. The sun is behind you. It gets very dark and very cold very quick, unless you are a fast rider that can do it in daylight. Last year the dark caught us close to Heroncliff. Had bike problems and lost allot of time and allot of legs (disc rotor rubbing for 120km). 5) Don't carry too many spares. No need for you and your teammie to both carry a multi-tool AND a pump. One of each. MUST haves, include half a roll of electrical tape (insulation tape), and about 10 cable-ties. These items weigh nothing and can fix just about anything. 5 years ago my brake lever broke off, insulation tape saw me through to the end of the race. 6) Pace yourself. Many riders know the race only starts when you get to Bergplaas. 7) Keep your eyes out for checkpoints / Know the route. Last year many teams missed a certain checkpoint. We did'nt. 8) Lights again. No need for huge lights, a regular Magicshine is fine. You can ride it on low beam all the way. Put it on high just for the downhills where you need it, flats, low beam. Uphills, you can even switch it off and just use your helmet light.
