Skubarra

How far is your commute? Personally a normal backpack never bothered me. That is where I would start with if I was you before investing in a carrier. But then my commute is only 40 minutes (on a slow day). Like @peetwindhoek said, I consider the backpack part of my strength training.

need to do this race at some point, although with the big climb at the finish it would just be a glorified training ride for me as I have no chance to hold onto the 60kg lightweights...

Think we would have to go way back to find a "fanboi" re Garmin backup/service, have been crap and getting progressively worse for years.

You will be perfectly fine on a mtb, enjoy the ride! 😀

Guess that is why for many years DC did not count for seeding, only in the last 2/3 years I have seen DC's start counting for seeding

I dont get the idea that they are actively aiming to be bigger than the Epic? Starting with 500 entrants (equaling 250 Epic teams so about a 1/3rd of the Epic), going for a luxury setup so I assume aiming for high profit margins so they dont need Epic numbers to be successful. Excited to see gravel growing and I hope this is successful. But I don't see this becoming the gravel version of the Epic, completely different type of appeal.

WP Cycling's newsletter last week said Tour de PPA will not be part of the league. So you are welcome to fall back to Group D with us and have a lekker fast ride 😉

Few years back (when there were still more road races around) - I finished at the sharp end of B bunch 4 races in a row without improving my road seeding tot A. 1 month later a little mtb race in the boland with a massive beta halved my road seeding index despite an unspectacular result. At that point I gave up being under illusion that the system is working (despite the impressive maths behind it)

it sometimes happen that provincial xcm and gravel events fall on the same weekend - a bit annoying for people who want to compete in both

But then how do you get from B to A? % is expected to be slower than elites, if its not then either the elites were sleeping on the day or the seeding system is wrong Answer is probably that you need a group of strong guys in % (or A at Winelands) to ride for time, ie work together to get the pace as high as possible and finish as close as possible to elites. Problem is there are many in %/A with no ambition to ride elites or they just want to win the group (which is their right, everyone have their own goals) which make it real hard to get a paceline going as many will just hang on or spoil the pace when given the opportunity.

Always a safe option to fall back a bunch or 2 and just do you own thing... Just don't let the hub critics find out... 🙃

You might even say one of the original gravel races, before we even knew such a concept exists!

Agree - and sometimes it can be very hard to improve your seeding from the 2nd group at the best of times. Last weekend at the Winelands A (2nd bunch) was slower than B and C (ignoring the D bunch story). So even if you broke away and won A bunch your seeding would not have improved.

Generally speaking you need about 1 strong result every 6 months to stay in or move up a group. For most it would mean that after the CTCT you need a strong result in either the Durbie Dash/One Tonner or DC to maintain your seeding before the next calendar year.

It shouldn't affect your time if you fall back (we did that for Winelands and it was fine). The incident you mentioned would have been an error, hopefully it was fixed.