Pandatron

Is there a point responding to this?

I'm asking the question not making a statement.. but i will provide my own answer. You should be arriving at ACE competently prepared in my view and have the ability to at least clear the cut off by 30 minutes. Survival of just making it Waterpoint to Waterpoint day after day increases your risk exposure exponentially, there will definitely be days where something goes wrong and stuff happens. But going or attempting to day after day in a completely blown state/dehydrated and then wondering why bad things happen, is doff.

If your just aiming to make cut off or be friends with the Hyenas, should you be at Epic?

Willing to bet that a lot of people who 'Trained', didn't actually train as much as they thought they did or ultimately just junk miled themselves into a state of perceived readiness.

Its the bikehub forum, every year this follows the same journey. We watch Epic, cheer our people on and then write a masochistic self flagellation of how we would never ride epic due to the price and whatever flavour is going of the current year. We then end this off with a disclaimer that if we got a ticket for free we would do it.

and the Spez Ares 2 apparently

+1 Lake Cycling

I wonder what the return rate of South African Riders is currently sitting at, having spoken to a few former consistent epic riders/racers, they haven't got a mind to return.

1) Dropper & 3 Pos Twinloc 2) Change the bars for carbon, don't go flat, little back sweep for the hand angle or flat if you have orangutan arms etc (Listen to your fitter) 3) Check the rims out, the Scott Sparks in SA had a bad batch of those rims, they will replace them as known issue. Extra mile 4) I never had luck with NX, I'd throw a GX AXS on 5) 4 Pot Brakes

More aero position on the flats? Has to be something different

I will pass the word onto the massive company that maintains it

Im actively trying to combat cost's here

So we need to get Luke married as well, can we add that to the above action plan

I disagree, while not toxic in the traditional sense, last few years the forums feel like one large contrarian viewpoint after the other or Walter Mitty Esque recreation of how they imagine their cycling career to be and the advice flows from there. When you chat in the JHB riding groups from MTB to Road, the viewpoint is largely don't entertain the forums, just go straight to the classifieds and do your thing.

Great LBS based out of Broadacres, with a very strong following from the Fourways, Dainfern, Bryanston, Lonehill crowd.