Hi All Thanks very much to everyone for sharing your views on the route here. It really helps me to make things better and better. For starters, I am the guy responsible for the route. I took over this race route last year and its my mission to help grow this race, so comments like these really help. I wanted to try and share some insight into the planning behind the route so that I can lend some perspective, as opposed to defend myself, which is lame. First and foremost, I am a biker just like all of you, well except for the guy who does not like single track! I like single track. I chose to move the start this year to take advantage of all the trail I built earlier in the year for SA Champs. Not sure if you all know but you guys can ride this now anytime, based from the eNanada trail centre you rode through with the white containers. So this meant awesome trails that the municipality spent a huge amount on, making for some great riding. One challenge though is having to come up onto the tar road and the resultant challenge with busses and taxi's. Our only control here are marshals. We try with Metro Police but they seem completely unwilling and plead they have no staff or vehicles to assist. We employ all local marshals who live adjacent to the route, but sometimes these guys do let us down, which did happen at one spot which lead to some guys taking a long detour. My sincere apologies. That said, there is always marking. This is a whole different thing in the umgeni valley (I did the Umfula route this year too). To say the locals find it good sport to remove marking is an understatement. Its a nightmare. We had a lead bike and car replacing marking as the race was underway, sometimes only minutes before the leaders. At the very least we always had some spray paint at every point where there is/ used to be a sign, but its not always easy to see and sometime one can miss it, especially when you have your head down and are hammering. For years we have tried different things, and if anyone has any ideas, I would be most grateful. On to the new bridge. While I thought this would be a cool feature of the race, it seems to have sparked one of the common issues and that is the sewage spill. I would never send folks through something like this on purpose, and unfortunately the two days of rain caused this just before the event which i obviously have no control over. The other idea behind going over this bridge was to avoid the very awkward section through Kwa-Dabeka where both marking and security have come into question in the past. This brings me to "that hill". Some background first. During the first Dusi Mfula years ago, we made people swim across above Mango rapid, which is where the climb starts. People always gave me a hard time about this, including last year. Last year's Outsurance route was to wade across here, ride up into the houses, up someone's very steep driveway, Down the tar road past a squatter camp, through a cultural center and onto the Silverpipes bridge, which was a carry for you and a nightmare for our mx bikers to get onto. To make the bridge secure meant about 12k in fencing and overnight security. However, over and above all this, if the river was too dangerous to cross, there is no other option. The race ends right there on the day. In fact, it would end at the new bridge cos its the only place to get cars to. IE, management wise, for the last how many years, we **** ourselves that no serious rains come the week before the race!!! This is a geographic fact that we cannot change. The left bank gets cliffed out by a 50m vertical face and there is no way but over. To get around this, I decided to cut the long trail up that climb and into Newlands West. I will be the first to say that this is not ideal. I know this. If I rode through there I would also think, "what are these okes on??". The fact is, that trail is only half of what I really wanted to, and will achieve. Time is a cruel master. Due to various reasons, I get a certain amount of time to achieve a route, and this adds up to man days on the ground. I had 15 guys working for 2 weeks just to open that up and I am upset that I could not open the full route up, which would have had you climbing, but never going into the houses and the shyt that comes with them. I hope this all adds up to why that was the best of a bad deal for me to work with. The route into durban, well thats a tough thing to do offroad, as you can imagine. Its urban offroad and forces us again to go through some sketchy areas. There are plans to take you in on the North bank in future which is part of the Durban Green Corridor project I am working on now. Sadly with the construction on the M4 incomplete, this was not to be for this year. Ok I will stop writing now. For those of you who will be back next year, good on you, I promise I will try to make this thing better and better and thanks for your support. Last thing. A race around the dam would be awesome. the trails are amazing. SA Champs will however be there again, around the dam, so where does that leave this race? Is the ideal of getting to durban dead? Look forward to thoughts and please ring me or email if you keen to chat. 0837993003. devlinf@mac.com. Over
