bleedToWin

Pet peeve of mine of mine: "The customer is always right" is commentary on the collective behaviour of customers. As example, if the best selling item is from your competitor and you believe it to be of inferior value to your offering then you are wrong, because the customer is always right. It was never meant to instruct a customer service approach where customers are treated as infallible.

In my experience bunch size up to 60 is fun and safe, and above that we start running out of space and the crash risk increases...

Interviewer asked Jonas, he said their move was based on himself feeling strong, not anything to do with their read on the competitors.

I don't like telling people keen to start riding to wait, but in this case saving up is the right advice. Where I disagree with the comment is the "in the first couple of years" part. If you buy a R5k bike you will have to immediately spend money to get it in good running order. At the very least a service, new chain, tyres, cables. Add to that the need for riding gear and you've spent another R5k already. What you are considering is equivalent to suggesting to a prospective runner running their first marathon to do so in whatever shoes and kit they have lying around the house. They won't have a good experience, and they won't continue with the sport.

Easy enough to disassemble and reassemble?

Girmay 🤞

The question is whether Vingegaard has matured and grown some confidence. Pagacar has the bigger matchbook, while he has the big mountains, but he is prone to burning matches in order to cover Pogacar for every attack, while in the high mountains so many of these attacks were frivolous and they both end up sitting up and the JV domestiques come back. If he's patient and uses his team to reel these long range moves back in at constant pace he'll take big time.

This suggestion (while not related to this series where licensed race categories will be used) is an excellent example of a for-our-members benefit that a governing body should pursue.

Don't bother with teams outside of Elites. Vets are perfectly happy using team tactics to win individual categories without the need for a team category. Make vets categories in 10 year brackets, not the 5-year brackets of our licenses. Consider having two vets categories per start group as a standard for the entire series and mandate race numbers that can easily be differentiated between categories. Drive a social campaign pursuing serious A-groupers or Open riders to license up and join the race categories. Maybe even subtly appeal to the ego by referring to the A-group as the social riders and fun riders. I'd go as far as emailing all open group entrants with a decent seeding "congratulations, you qualify for an upgrade to race group X, here's what you need to do to." Verify license categories (at all events, not just those forming part of this Series), or drop the rule that states a rider with a Vets license may not enter as an Elite. Automate this at time of entry, no faffing about at registration.

A league where best n-out-of-N races counts towards your total only really works where it is generally and reasonably accepted that all riders will endeavour to do all N events. It allows for missing an event or getting a non-result due to unforeseen circumstances. Designing a league with the intention that the participants (almost) never race directly against each other detracts from the value of winning the league. Oudsthoorn is only slightly closer to CPT than Durban is to JHB. Sure, it's in the same province, but it's not an easy or cheap one to work into the schedule, and then you're still only on two races. Durban would be race of choice #4 for a JHB based rider and most would not bother with it since the Free State Challenge is reasonably easy and cheap to attend and fulfills the required 3 races. Presumably the primary idea of the league is to incentivise serious riders and teams to travel to a few out of province races a year. The pilot is however set up so that the one province where teams have funds do not really need to travel. The pilot will thus not give insight into their willingness (ability) to travel, and only to that of CPT riders. Probably too late in the planning for this one, but anyway: Another objective of the pilot might be to test whether a league increases hype and participation and carries value for spectators. I would have dropped Durban and included One Tonner in Stellenbosch. Have a separate North league of 3 events and South league of 3 events and all events count towards your total. This would actually give insight into whether a national league in 2024 could work on these fronts.

It's only possible to do 4 out of the 6 events. If it's your best 4 that count then this venture is likely dead in the water. If it's your best 3 that count then some JHB based riders will go do the Free State Challenge and the remaining 5 events will likely just have their normal participants that they would have had regardless.

Hmm 🤔

I hope so. Tag me with feedback if you fix it and I'll do likewise if I open mine up. 🙂

Service gone wrong? Should I be concerned to open mine up? My shifter has a mechanical click before the button click engages. No big deal, but YouTube video shows that it's likely these springs getting worn or mucky. The guy in the video simply cleaned and lubricated these springs and resolved his issues.

Entry fees will be eclipsed by travel and accommodation costs for anyone wanting to do 5 out of 6 of these races.

Yeah, they really have not said anything about the Series or what they as an organisation will bring to the table.

After some pondering I'm wondering if we are not all discussing a League, while this is advertised as a Series. Maybe CSA is using the terms interchangeably, who knows, but a Series could be hosted without an overarching points system and still be successful. If CSA could standardise and significantly raise the level of a few aspects of racing it might be worth while. I'm thinking: Marketing and hype Live coverage Road safety Prize money

Super scant on details. "Here's a list of events that already existed, and we are calling it a series." Okay, but why should we care any more or less about these events than we already did? Whether that be participation or spectating...

There's a bunch for sale, although mostly Di2 strangely. The Ultegra mechanical set needs new hoods and needs to come down in price IMO.

When it comes to problems that people are able to accurately characterize (or even parameterize) AI can do well. Even when these problems are complex with many variations, if there is enough content out there with someone saying okay in this instance because of these reasons the solution looks like this, then AI can train on it and even start filling in some blanks. I am yet to see a video or read an article on athletic preparation that looks at the holistic, gives parameters and gives a solution. They all say "it depends". AI has plenty of good training sessions and content on training principals to learn from however.

Having already swapped out my stem to get more length and upgrading to 40cm carbon bar on my bike that came with a 44cm alloy fitted, I'm too far down the road to consider a different stem. I've considered if the Defy stem cover would be compatible with the Propel stem, but also impossible to source.

If you figure out how to get a good looking result (paramount since this is 100% a vanity "upgrade") either with your own print or professional prints of your prototype then you've got a customer in me and presumably many others!

Someone on aliexpress is selling these printed stem covers for the previous generation Propel. I don't mind the OEM stem cap so much, since on my Large frame with big saddle to bar drop the 120mm stem doesn't look too ungainly, but this does seem like a decent execution to improve the aesthetics of the bike. Obviously no model available so can't try printing. No way I can design this!

Garmin body battery gives a good indication too.