Skubarra

Was like that last year as well? Think those young eager beavers who still have to learn the benefits of wheelsucking do most of the work up front in the first half which makes us faster than & bunch - happy for them to be there...

Just glad nothing is broken! Trust you will be back in the saddle soon!

I take it you are not riding on Sunday.... 🙁

ok - but then you must still be hoping for an "average day" for the splits to work? A few years back I compared my splits with the computer and most of the times I was nowhere near the predicted splits until after Suikerbossie. I guess it's helpful to the the extent where you in control of your average speed over the route, but most of the riders in the front half of the field are not going to drop their starting groups (or drop from their groups) to keep pace with their time splits....

Apologies for being dismissive but the time split calculator is fairly useless for anything other than missing the cut-offs. Wind strength & direction on the day and the relatively big climbs in the 2nd half are huge factors, you are not going to cover the route at a uniform speed. Usually only around Suikerbossie you will know if you are on target for your sub-whatever...

Not to be facetious but then you move back into the territory of audax or normal bike touring for which you don't need to pay an extra R2K? The R2K makes sense to me if you going to treat this as a race or maybe I just don't understand 🤣

This is the hub- you post a new type of event and people will comment, not all of them will be praising your ideas... I am kind of with @Gr3mlin131 - the appeal of this type of event is not immediately obvious to me, but if they can get 20 riders for this kind of niche event with seemingly no event costs then good on the organisers for trying something new and pulling it off. Hopefully peeps share some of their warstories on here to convert skeptics like me

You get people who like to brag about their "sub 3h30" second lap on social media or Strava. Thing is anyone who have cycled at the back of the field or have done a second lap would know its impossible to do without being an inconsiderate ass to everyone around you

Training overseas, waiting for their ban to be lifted to make a big comeback...

I guess in 2E people will just be grateful for the opportunity to slip an ebike Further up ahead Johnny trying to win 1F might not appreciate the ebike pulling the group back to him after every attempted break-away 😅

Yes - a minority of them will be like that unfortunately. Just like you are going to have a few e-bikers sneaking in groups they shouldn't be in and interfering with the bunch riding, doesn't mean we are going to ban all of them?

We should be able to keep the roadies and gravel riders apart for most of the race (at least the fast ones, the social pace riders will probably share a few kilometers on the day). Depending on what access we can get on private property the gravel route could be up to 70% gravel. If we can get this off the ground then it might be an option in future to host on seperate days 🙂 but that would need a lot of entries to be viable with the increased costs involved - who knows...

Just out of interest - helping with organising the Durbie Dash this year - we are looking to add a gravel race this year in addition to the usual mtb and road races. Should be somewhere between 80km and 100km Its a flippen nightmare though to come up with a route that has less than 50% tar if your starting point is Durbanville 🤣 Very curious to see how big the demand for the gravel race will be compared to the others

Yeah - that announcement is not going to stop 2nd loops from happening- is it? Heart warming to think that after 45 years of doing this organisers can still be super naive 💪

Quick google search to refresh the memory https://www.iol.co.za/capeargus/sport/dispute-after-mystery-woman-beats-top-rider-92929 https://www.iol.co.za/capeargus/sport/disqualified-couples-remarkable-races-92694

Ok... Must have been kept quiet then Only banning I know off is that couple that cheated many years ago to win their groups by taking a shortcut.

Do you know of anyone that has actually been banned for doing this? I haven't...

Would be interesting to know how many of the 2500 are peeps who were "stolen" from the long route and how many would not have ridden otherwise. Planning to do the short route as a 2nd lap to ride with my son.

Agree - anyone who performed in the early 2010's local mtb scene will forever be tainted by association... We have rose tinted memories of Burry doing stuff like this to his rivals but as I recall he didn't always dominate the local scene to the extent that a Lance did his era. I recall Kevin Evans ran him close on numerous occasions and every now and then sneaked an important win ahead of him. Their rivalry made the local mtb scene much more interesting back then compared to what we have now.. Would be interesting to know how the rivalries would have looked if doping wasn't involved.

I think he was getting treatments for a burst appendix that violated the WADA rules, applied for a TUE - got denied and then decided to continue racing anyway. Think the substance abuse came after the ban

He was subjected to the same tests that caught out people like George, Evans, Stewart and Knox. So at the very least he wasn't taking what those okes were taking. Was it possible that he was a super sophisticated doper using stuff SAIDS/WADA haven't caught onto a decade later? I would give him the benefit of the doubt that most likely not.

Please name and shame - who are these pro men being beaten by a 50 year-old lady doper?!

Out of interest of those 6 you mentioned only George, Knox and Wilson showed a level of sophistication in the way they went about doping (at least in relation to the way they got caught). With Evans, Stewart and Croeser it was like a doping version of dumb and dumber, I don't think they had the ability to be clever dopers, in my biased opinion likely they only doped for a short time before they got caught. And both Evans and Stewart were pretty useless at the end of the careers by the time they got caught despite the doping.

Put it this way - I don't buy into the concept of the "Eye of the Tiger" type efforts on the day imagined by some sub-3 hopefuls on the hub in the past. I think most of the hard work is to get to the level where you are in contention for the sub-3 & to get the seeding needed for a sub-3. On the day of the ride it's 90% chilling in the bunch and just to make sure you aren't caught napping on the climbs. And then you also need a bit of luck from the weather gods and not get a mechanical.

Yes and no - if you are a decent climber you only have to make sure you stick on the sections you mentioned, the rest of the ride fairly mundane and gives you the chance to recover. Even if you are a bit heavier rider the climbs mentioned are not that long, you just bleed through the ears for a minute or so longer and make sure you are not at the back of the bunch when the group hits those climbs.