devocean

Easy cycle!

The few guys that were working could have closed it, but who wants to bury themselves while everyone gets a free ride and drops them later with fresh legs? Breaking away from the bunch to try bridge over to the break would be the right thing to do but I know I'm not strong enough for that. Even though I know I have almost zero chance of ever winning a race, I'm still not happy to just let the race go up the road and sit there riding at 30km/h for the rest of the ride either. Still trying to work out why I race.

I was there. It was a combination things. Firstly I think any one of those dudes in that team were capable riding off the front whenever they wanted, but will ignore that for a sec. After Vissershok I'd estimate the bunch to be down to around 30 guys, mostly 50kg youngsers and 4 or 5 of the Hartlief team. When we got through Durbanville out onto the open roads, we could see the break just a minute or two ahead so I thought we'd easy close it down, but it didn't seemed like only max 4 or 5 of the guys had any interest in chasing and even then, we'd swap turns a couple of times but then after we've each swapped off, next in the pace line is all the Hartlief guys, so they'd either sit on the front forcing somebody (and it'll always be that same few people) to come around them back to the front or they'd pull out of the paceline and nobody would want to come through. I'm still learning about racing, so I may be missing something, but I question the tactics of the other 'teams' in there that didn't help chase at all until the race was long gone, then attack what's left of the bunch to gain a couple more places. As for why the rest of the Hartlief guys just rode off the front and nobody followed...they couldn't! And as predicted, all the 50kg kids who were too tired to take a turn all day, smoke you at the finish!

I'm not sure if even half of the dudes (in bunch) sitting on knew what was actually happening, with regards to those tactics

Interested to see what the beta for this race will be as the winning two guys rode away from peleton from the gun, not to be seen again. Massive kudos to them and their team (Hartlief) did just as good a job in stopping any chase developing. That was real teamwork as I rekon just about any one of them could have won given a chance.

Ja, A is the first group at 6:30am

No, starting at 0. you're a programmer right?

Did it take you a LONG time to find to find the solution?

Was hoping for a $ start but got put in &. I saw you mentioned your index was below one so I checked your start group and you're "&" too. How low of an index do you need to get to be over 30 and to start in $??

I rode in % bunch and there was no need for crossing the white line as there was ZERO racing at all

Left home a little late and drove like a lunatic to try make it for the 6am start in $ (blouberg to durbanville in 15 mins). No time to look for parking, just drove off the road into a ditch (worry about trying to get car out later!). Grabbed bike out the car and got to the road where the start is with one minute to spare. Saw all the $ dudes in the road at the start just a few meters away but marshal insisted I had to go all the way around and wade through all the other cyclists in their starting chutes. Made it to the front just in time to see my bunch riding off. So gutted!

Any other day of the week I'd have bumped into you, but I worked from home on Wednesday. Huge day out for you!

That sucks! how far down the hill does it finish?

Looking at numbers from last year there were just over 400 riders, so smaller groups would make sense. For some reason this race does seem to attract a better quality field than other races, anyone know why? Doesn't look like any wind tomorrow morning and with Botmaskop being excluded, I think the beta for the race is going to be really low.

So, the Paarl race this weekend is said to be a seeding event for 2020 CTCT which would make it over a year old by the time they do seeding for 2020 CTCT. What's the chances that they'll use it for seeding this year's CTCT? (same question goes 99er and Tour de PPA). If they don't, with the penalty it'll be completely useless as a seeding race for most people.

At 21s in, you see the dude that won come up from behind on the right hand side and then at 1:04 two of his team mates cruising past everyone on the left hand side when it's strung out, making it look so easy

You know cyclists love to moan about anything and everything. Yes, the traffic sucked getting into the venue (could have parked outside and had a 5 min cycle in), bunches were a bit big to start with and the marshalling wasn't great but other than that it was a great race.

At one point I remember bombing down one of the hills at around 70km/h and it was all strung out and I was scraping by oncoming cars that were driving in the yellow lane on their side of the road, thinking to myself that this was nuts.

People riding in $ bunch have an extra one to go on the back of the seat post. The blank one I think you're supposed to stick that sticker with the number onto it. As for the no holes, I think that's a fail

I just sent you a PM with a friend's details who's got an entry for you

I did! I'm the salty guy

I wrote this post, never thought anything of it and had no plans to ride DC, and then Craig contacts me out of the blue like 3 months later... https://community.bikehub.co.za/topic/178068-event-coronation-double-century-2018/page-5?do=findComment&comment=3355875

I used to commute by motorbike. Took it in for a service one day, so it was out of action for a week, so I cycled to work for that week and have been cycling to work every day since. That was around 2010

I got fined for being too sweaty...the chicks in the team were too grossed out to hold onto my pocket.

We're no longer strangers...just strange