bleedToWin

Especially with @BuffsVintageBikes added perspective of the confusion. I was near the front of A for both crashes so knew what was going on, but riders should not be treated what he's reporting, especially with the safety consequences of it all.

> because no one in a bunch will stop unless you are specifically told to stop by an official, with both crashes we only had a few seconds to process what happened in front of us. I'll accept that and withdraw the "rider" part of my comment and leave all post crash poor decisions on the comms. > But that B bunch was still faster than A on the section after Vierlanden and catching up with A, no sympathy from me. Closing a 30s gap down to 20s in 11km with a singular focus of catching the rabbit, while the rabbit is oblivious to your presence is maybe worth a pat on the back, nothing more. I don't blame the riders in B for chasing, but you also can't expect the A-group to ride as if they are being chased. They are there to race (or at least half of them are) and should not have their race started with 100 riders 30s behind them. That's all on the organisers.

The biggest frustration, eclipsing all others, is that organisers are not improving. On the contrary, we're heading in the wrong direction...

We might not be Alex Miller level strong, but riding in D is a very expensive, very early ride that we could just do from home for free...

At the end of the Neutral zone, B group was 30s behind us according to GPS data. Why did B not have a car enforced Neutral, it's the elite ladies group. Why is there not a bigger gap in front of whatever bunch is considered to be the first funride bunch and the last bunch to have a true neutral start? Why did the Comms and riders of B group think it appropriate to speed past 15 stationary cars and motorobikes and 107 stopped A groupers at the fruit sellers 4-way. Why did A-group have 107 starters when realistically only 50 max are there to race? In 2020 A-group had 58 starters, historically as low as 33. Has PPA lost their own playbook wrt keeping racing safe on open roads post Covid? Why was B-group allowed to restart 40s behind A-group after their eventual stoppage? Why do I feel like selling my road bike after so many road races these days? 😢

Well, the tandems that started 3min after A-group caught us in 2min30s, so wrap your head around that math... /s We can do high speed corners single file, we can't dodge motorbikes pulling up stumps at 60kph...

They do them every Saturday and Sunday, and have two follow cars to cater for different abilities. Visitors are welcomed, but if you become a "regular visitor" you'll eventually be asked to officially join the club.

Yeah, that's not how statistics work though. That's called the gambler's fallacy.

Remember when you turned your SABC yagi antenna 90-degrees and it stopped working? The signal has a polarity and sender and receiver need to be aligned.

Yeah, I advised those hesitant about it to just do the short route, but rightly few were interested to travel that far for a flat 85km event. Also "neutral" for the long route was 4W/kg up the gravel climb from the start line! 😆

Well run event and some really good racing. Enjoyed the venue, even though it was very far out. Not sure if it can grow into a race for the masses with this venue and format though.

Tough one, but what you've come across here in your garage is equivalent to a PS2. It doesn't matter that it was used once, it has los all it's value. A bicycle at least still has utility, but the budget of that market is severely constrained. There are tons of bikes in better looking riding condition for R1k or less on Facebook.

I've never seen it play out this way, but with the current collective punishment approach a team with a rider in the break could theoretically keep crossing the line and get the chasing group stopped in spite of the team(s) chasing not doing anything wrong...

One can tweak the idea, but it needs to come down to a solution that the riders proposed and all agreed to so when you are pulled back you can't really complain.

Normally the team drilling it at the front will have all their riders safely left of the line (I believe this was the case yesterday) so they won't even notice the motorbike coming up and pulling one opponent out 5 wheels behind their last man, they will just keep pushing as they have a positional advantage they want to capitalise on.

I've been thinking for a while now that we need something akin to the "rider's commission" that they have in Europe and that we as the riders need to come up with a solution that all the teams can agree to... Something like: A group gets 2 centre line warnings which will be signalled with a giant yellow flag. Each transgression afterwards will see one rider flagged down. It's not a DQ, but you have to pull over and come to a complete stop before continuing your race. The motorbike marshal will do his best attempt to flag a transgressing rider as close to the front of the bunch as possible. Reason being, the riders right at the front are not transgressing so collective punishment is unfair. The riders at the back have to choose between staying left in the wind and closing an impossible 30 bike lengths or risk getting flagged. It's a non-choice as both ends your race immediately so you rather gamble getting flagged. Somewhere near the front there is 2 to 3 riders that had a choice between taking bad slip on the white line or good slip just right of the line, and they are forcing the hand of those behind them.

Not sure if the caps are because you didn't find my feedback constructive? 🤔 Like I said, I don't know if it was Shumeez or another Comm or official vehicle, but a mistake was made that can easily be corrected at future events and I appreciate you keeping an eye out for info on it in the race report on our behalf. 🙂

You guys got stopped for 90s, opening our gap back out to 2min15 with 30km to go. At this stage the chase must have been hard already (we were drilling it up front into the wind and you guys were closing) so after being stopped it was a serious task to close it. The defending champion burned through his whole team and eventually had to chip in himself to chase it back. He ended up coming 3rd, with two privateers taking 1st and 2nd after (rightly) not contributing to the chase. The break go caught but the results were for sure influenced...

If you don't mind giving them some more feedback, they were sitting way to close to the front of the $ bunch in the first 30km and for sure interfered with the break formation phase of the race. Not sure which Comm it was, but felt like they were very inexperienced w.r.t the distance required to not offer some slipstream advantage to riders behind you. I say this as one of the 4 riders who most likely got the biggest benefit from their actions...

Likely due to the mentioned lack of clashing events this year there are more strong riders entered filling the first 3 groups.

They should really remove the PPA group eligibility as there hasn't been PPA groups in years and it just confuses people. If 500 people with an "A seeding" enter then they will fill up $, #, A, and half of B. Invariably someone with a "B seeding" will end up in C. The part you want to look at is your index, and how different races results in favourable indexes due to strength of field, difficulty of race etc. Seeding queries are largely reserved for those who did events outside of this timing ecosystem FYI.

He was impressive at provincials so certainly would be foolish to discount him. Pity de Bod couldn't make it this year.

First question is elite mens and womens TT today. Small, but very competitive field!

Thank you very much. The back drop is hilarious! Honestly I missed it completely until I saw it pointed out today on socials! I actually prefer the flat podium over the regular setup where my head is above the backdrop, but that's probably just a 6ft3 person problem...

Breaking your 7 year silence. Welcome. 😀