Fritz Pienaar

We did not merge all the distances and actually had separate routes for the 10, 20 and rest. You are correct though that it is a bad idea to merge so many riders in muddy conditions. This will not happen at all next year, as we will split it over 2 days.

I will attempt to answer your questions Thug, but really don't want anyone to feel shafted, so I will happily give any of you a full refund if you feel that was the case, so email me on fritz@advendurance.com if you want a refund. The entries came in slowly in Jan and we made a forecast based on previous experience, but had a sudden influx of entries close to the closing date, which made it difficult to make arrangements. We increased our medal order in the last week and was able to make an additional 500 and we packed extra stickers, numbers etc, but was not able to order more socks etc in the short time frame. We calculate the water allocations based on the amount of riders, but got that seriously wrong, for which I apologised. The water would have however been sufficient if the water points had better control (not allowing riders to wash bikes, glasses and faces) and if the refilled earlier. This is still our responsibility, so I am not blame shifting, but promising to do it better going forward. We used livetime on smaller events and massive events like the Warrior race series (8000 participants) without issues, so I was confident that they would cope, but it was not the case. I am still convinced that you will really be impressed by them in the future.

We did not anticipate the numbers and was initially hoping for 1000 riders, so we advertised that entries would stay open and even advertised late entries. Some guys plan their weekend and arrange accommodation etc before they actually enter the race, so we did not want to cap it at a late stage. We will close entries earlier next year and split it over 2 days, which will eliminate 90% of the issues.

Hi guys, Thanks for all the feedback. We are in the process of communicating to all the riders to apologise for the mishaps and explain some of the issues, so you should be getting the below message quite soon, with some more detail on photos, results etc. Thank you for participating in the MTN National MTB Dullstroom, driven by Nissan event #1 on Saturday. We are very thankful for the great support and our participation numbers completely exceeded our expectation. There were some challenges that accompanied the great numbers, so I would like to take this opportunity to apologise to the participants that were affected by this and assure you that you have my commitment to sort out these issues before the next event. I would like to elaborate on a couple of points: Water points: The nature of the route forced us to place water points at remote locations without easy access to running water, but we allocated huge quantities of food and drinks to the water points and it should have been sufficient in our experience. The muddy conditions, high participation numbers and warm weather put the water points under pressure, and some points ran out during the event. The water point personnel reported that the water was not only used for consumption, but many riders also washed their faces and bicycle chains, which amplified the problem. I assure you that we will increase quantities at the upcoming events to prevent the same problems. Congestion on route: We pride ourselves in offering you great routes and we go out of our way to avoid congestion on route, so it is especially disappointing if we don't get this right. We expected between 1000 and 1500 participants at Dullstroom and was confident that the routes could handle the load, but there was a massive influx of last minute entries which bought the total to over 2500 entries. We will definitely split this event over 2 days next year, which will resolve this issue. Medals Advendurance started an initiative with Qhubeka, where we give riders the option to donate their medals to the charity, which will use the funds to empower communities with bicycles. Your response to this initiative was great and we had over 50% of you donate your medals to Qhubeka, which means that we will donate R15 000 from this event to them. We had 1200 medals, which should have been sufficient, but we had many riders who still took medals, event after they opted to donate the money and some of you therefore did not get medals. I believe it is a great campaign and we will therefore keep doing it, but we will orders more medals to have some reserve and improve our control at the finish. Results: We started using a new timing service provider in 2014 and we are really excited about working with them, because they offer amazing technology like live timing and sms updates. This was however their first event with us and we experienced some teething problems. LiveTime did capture the results and it is available on www.livetime.co.za, so please visit the site and let them know if there are any issues? We really liked the amazing scenery and route options in Dullstroom and believe that this will grow into one of the best events on the MTB calendar. Thank you for your continued support and we hope to offer you many world class events going forward. Kind regards, Fritz Pienaar

Thank you for taking the time to give us the feedback on the event! Be assured that we will use the feedback to improve the events, so that these issues doesn't occur again. Our 1st mistake was perhaps to underestimate the impact that the increased amount of riders would have on the event. We closed the entries for the previous 2 events on 2700 but we always had a much bigger demand. We thought that we were going to be able to handle more riders at Down & Dirty, but we now realized that we allowed too many riders which caused problems on route and at water tables. We will move the cap for the next event down to 2500 riders and will improve the water points and finish points to avoid this from happening again. An unfortunate indecent occurred when a quad bike with 2 riders (which were suppose to go around) attempted to ride over the last bridge and broke it. This caused a chain reaction of people stopping and getting off, which in turn created bottlenecks. I had to make a call on how to handle this later in the day, when we realized that the bottlenecks got really long. I decided to reroute the riders to avoid further unhappiness, which he felt was the best solution under the circumstances, although it did affect results for some of the riders. We have no way of establishing who went around and who was caught in the bottleneck and can therefore not change results, but can only apologise profusely. Be assured though that it will not negatively affect your seeding for the next event, as the SAS system only takes your best results and discounts your bad results. None of the prize categories were affected by this. We try to build routes that are interesting with lots of singletracks and bridges, and we believe that is why our events are popular. It backfired on us in this instance when the bridge collapsed on a tight singletrack section, so we will have better contingency plans going forward. This with smaller numbers and bigger gaps between batches and less route overlap will hopefully resolve this. Thank you for the feedback and support.

Hi Guys, I only saw this tread now, so apologies for not communication earlier. Results are on http://www.cyclesport.co.za/content/full-results-mtn-national-xcm-6-gravel-travel and http://www.spectrumsport.co.za/ViewResults/2012MountainBiking.aspx and also now on SASeeding. We normally wait with SAS for a day or two to sort out queries before we upload and update seeding. For those wanting to know what happened to Kevin - http://kevinevansracing.blogspot.com/ Thanks for all who took part in the event and for positive feedback.

;-) I don't think it was easy, so please don't reorientate me. Our aim is to have a marathon winning time of just over 3 hours, so 3:32 for Lourens is and indication that the route was too hard.

The route was actually easier on paper than last year and we definitely did not make it harder on purpose, but the top soil that washed away in recent floods which made the roads rougher. We will listen to your feedback and will try to make it a bit easier and more enjoyable next year, so don't worry about it getting harder. Sabie will never be easy though, but we certainly want to cater for the masses and will do what we can to accommodate the bulk of the riders. Thanks for the feedback.

I am the first to admit that our service haven't always been great and I'm to blame for that, because I took on more than I could handle. We are putting in a big effort to provide better service and I believe it is paying of. We employed some great new guys in JHB (Christopher as manager and Desmond in the workshop manager) so give them a try - You will be impressed. Mark - I Was in the store yesterday and saw you beaut new Niner - Congrats!

Hi guys, I'm sorry to hear about the bad experiences at my Irene store. It is no excuse, but the workshop has been under a bit of pressure. Please email me (fritz@cyclesport.co.za) or PM me with your problems and I will gladly arrange for a free service / voucher. I unfortunatly don't get into the shops nearly as much as I need to and rely on my customers feedback, so anything (positive or negative) will be greatly appreciated.

Hi Ikonic, I organised the Nissan Hazeldean on 5 June and we cleaned the route directly after the race, except for a 5km section around Sammy Marx where we left some boards hoping that riders (like yourself) would ride the section again, as we were planning more events in that area and want to establish the route. The area belongs to Atterbury and will be developed in the future, but there a no fences, animals or farming activity at the moment and it is a great riding venue. Be assured that there are no litter or markings on the rest of the route or on any of the farmers property that was used in our event. We recently decided to move our 12 hour (previously 6 hour) event to fountains after we received reports of crime in the Sammy Marx area, so we won't use the venue again this year and will make sure that the last couple of boards and bunting are removed.

It used to be a great trail as Dirt Rider said, but is not currently ridable. The municipality erected palisade fences before and after each road crossing, which basically closed off the trail sections. I've been in contact with David Boshoff from Groenkloof and they are busy to try and reopen these trails, so we will hopefully be able to rider there again soon.

6:00 from the shop. Most rides are around 2 hours.

Thanks for joining us on the ride Gregzilla! Join us again on Friday or Saturday for a bit more relaxing breakfast ride.

Tuesdays provide a good training ride for guys that are above avg fitness (e.g. 40km in around 2 hours). Fridays will be easier breakfast rides (around 30km) and Saturdays will cater for all groups.

Sorry to hear about the incident manbearpig. You seem to have experienced all problems of which I was aware on the 70km. Re the beam at the pedestrian gate. The marshal should have opened the big gate which was unlocked but closed for safety reasons, so the marshal slipped up a bit by pointing the riders towards the pedestrian gate. We obviously opened the big gate when we heard that riders were channeled through the small gate. Re The white gate that was closed by a farmer for a brief period of time. This property belongs to the Onverwagt community and we obviously had permission to go through there. The farmer that closed the gate is renting a piece of property from Onverwagt and had no right to close the gate - I think that the community slipped up and didn't inform him about the race and we weren't aware of the guy renting some property. We had written permission from around 60 land owners and took out insurance the properties etc. Land access is our biggest challenge with races so close to Gauteng where there are many land owners for one event. Re Sewerage at the finish - This was really crap - I know, but we had no way of knowing that the pipe was going to bust and there was not way of changing the route on the day of the race. There was no problem with sewerage on Friday before the race. Email me (fritz@cyclesport.co.za) and I will arrange to compensate you in some way.

This is the old DH route and there is a new one that was used on the weekend. There are quite a few more trails, but they are slightly overgrown. Try Northern side of Klapperkop from the tower down to George Storrar and then up the steep climb following the old pipeline which are marked by the white cement poles. Turn right at the top and there is another downhill towards George Storrar and another climb up towards Johan Rissik. Not for the unfit or for beginners.

This made for interesting reading! We, as race organisers, welcome all feedback and comments on the standard of the mtb races and will take your comments to heart. One of the biggest problems with technical routes or technical bits are the congestion that it causes. We are trying to alleviate congestion by introducing the new seeding sytem (SAS) and the batch starts. Hopefully this will make for happy mtb'ing during races!

MJ, I'm very glad to see that you are just yanking everyone's chain. I am also glad to see that most of you guys are pro-singletrack - because like a good buddy of mine likes to say... the best things in life starts with an'S'!!! But seriously, it is important to us, the race organisers, to know what you guys who participate in our races like or dislike. We do realise that singletrack in a race generally causes congestion which is also one of the reasons we have introduced the new seeding system(SAS) and batch starts. We are constantly trying to improve our events to give maximum enjoyment to our riders!

Thanks for the feedback! We're on a big mission to improve the service in the FPC stores and I'm glad to see that it is paying off. Look out for the pro-workshops coming soon.

Hi Neil, Thanks for the feedback. Be assured that we will use it constructively and will certainly make the necessary improvements before the next event (Cullinan on 28 Aug). Sub Junior Cat: We started the short distance as a fun event and it has always been an informal and untimed event, but it is a valid concern and we will make sure that they are timed from the next event onwards. Timing: The timing is done by a 3rd party service provider and it has been a concern. The problem only started when we implemented batched starts and new number boards and we did have some teething issues. I think we found what caused the problem and it will also be improved at the next event. The SAS seeding system however works 100% and allot of the problems had to do with riders starting in the wrong batches, capturing of late entries etc. I believe that the seeding will be beneficial in the long run and that it will provide riders with a safer and more enjoyable experience, so it was hopefully worth the struggle. System: The Company that delivered the PA system realized on the race morning that they left the speaker cables in JHB. We had to improvise and use some inadequate backup equipment. This will obviously not happen again. Point standings: We developed a system that will automatically calculate the points when the final results gets pulled into the seeding systems, so this will be released soon. We needed to implement some changes in the National series due to phenomenal growth, and we experienced some teething problems, but I assure you that the series going forward will be bigger and better than ever. Thank you for the continued support.

This was the 12th event, but Subaru sponsored it for 10 years until 2009. Year one had no sponsor.

? Burry and Kevin had XX. Also interested to know what Knox had. Did a bad gear choice lose the race? As bad as using silly light tyres and puncturing like Burry did at Attakwas. Interesting remarks. The top 5 riders at the MTN Attakwas and Barberton all used Sram XX. Max was the only guy in the top 10 on a hardtail though and his bike was almost 1.5kg lighter.

See Ben-Melt's report below. I feel sorry for the organiser, because I know what goes into organising an event, and an small mistake by a lead bike can screw it up. Riders should also rather keep riding despite going wrong and appeal afterwards, because it is impossible to rectify if they've turned back. After a hasty trip back home on Saturday afternoon I washed my bike, helmet and shoes and prepared the rest of my equipment for Sunday?s race. It turned out to be a wasted effort! A decent field turned up for the Urban Assault race held at Ruimsig Stadium in Roodepoort (Johannesburg). We had a fast start with Alex Pavlov and Marc Bassingthwaighte (Garmin/Adidas) pushing the pace from the gun. Marc went so fast on the first downhill that the lead bike had to get out of the way and stop on the side of the trail. I picked up where Marc left off and opened a nice gap on the other riders when I attacked up a short steep climb. The route ducked and dived in and out of singletrack, tar roads and through squatter camps. About 8km?s from the finish the lead bike stopped and told me to turn around as he had lead me astray. Backtracking we picked up Marc, Bryce Munro (DCM) and the next 4 riders until we ran into the race organizer back at the stadium. He said we WERE on the correct route and had to go back the way we came and complete the race. Nobody knew what was going on so we returned to the stadium via the most direct route. Apparently we were at fault for following the lead bike and the instructions given to it by the race organizer so we were all disqualified. Out of principle I just wanted my entry money returned, but it still doesn?t make up for a mistake by the race organizers that ended up costing the 7 leading riders dearly. As a rider my job is to prepare myself and my equipment to the best of my abilities so that I can be competitive at races. I did all of that, got up early, travelled to the race, entered and followed the race route as marked, but when the lead bike tells you to turn around what more can you do but obey. He is, after all, the mobile race marshal. I repeat what I said a few weeks ago ? race organizers MUST start taking more responsibility and be held accountable if they don?t deliver on their end of the bargain. Until next time, happy trails! Melt Fritz Pienaar2009-08-18 00:34:38

The Berg Bohaai festival was on the same day at the stadium and entrance was free until 09:15 in the morning and to participants. There was a R40 charge after 09:15 but that allowed you to watch Dozi and to partake in the other activities.