BrettAS

Encourage the race organisers to use ROAG. they only charge R20 per late entry!!

definately!!! but please dont try and justify a R3000 entry fee!

I know they are going to have actual kit at the next few MTB races in KZN for people to try for size. if you arent able to make it, give them a shout on info@roag.co.za and i am sure they will give you szing detail.

Go to the ROAG website, LOGON, click on the Kit icon on the mome page. this takes you direct to the "purchase" page. click on the drop down menu at the bottom of the page and you can see ALL the kit you want. if you click on the small picture, it will enlarge so you see a full screen picture of the kit. they have everything - shirts - mens and ladies; shorts, bib shorts, kiddies stuff and you can get your own name and ROAG number on the pockets. Very cool!!!

Have you seen the new ROAG cycling kit on their website?? looks really cool!!

Part of the problem is that it is virtually impossible to identify road cyclists as opposed to motor vehicles. if each bicyle had a visible permanent number on it, that number could be reported, together with a photo to CSA? and that cyclist disciplined. obviously we need a set of "road usage rules" for cyclists that both cyclists and motorists are aware of. for instance "is it legal to ride 2 abreast?"

Hey Maddox. sorry, no route maps. how do i find out more about riding in the Eselfontein area??

wouldnt you be pissed off if a guy who cheated starts in a better batch than you at the next race??

I dont have a problem with people entering one distance and doing a shorter race. there are many good reasons to do this. the MUD at Eston was definately one of them. everybody is also welcome to the medals, beers etc, because after all you ahve paid for them just like the guys who actually entered the shorter race. the problem comes when riders dont tell anybody!! riders who enter 60 and only do 40 and then dont tell anybody are all getting better results, possibly prizes and very contentiously - better seedings!! technically, these people should be DQ'd (or DNF if you want to be kind). yes you can put timing mats at the split, but this is soemtimes a logistical problem and it increases cost! at Eston we couldnt get satelite reception at the finish because of the weather. imagine what it was like at the bottom of the hill in the trees. the simplest way is for thos people NOT TO CROSS THE TIMING MATS!! its really not that hard!!

Riders starting one race and then changing their minds and doing a shorter race is becoming a REAL problem!! effectively this is CHEATING, or am i over reacting?? personally, i understand if somebody gets to a certain point and then doesnt feel good etc and decides to do a shorter race (you never get people doing the longer race!!). but then if you do this, make sure you dont cross the finish line. maybe people are unaware of the timing and results chaos this causes when people finish a race they are not entered into. then on top of it all, people STILL COLLECT A PRIZE FOR A RACE THEY HAVE NOT FINISHED. that is shocking form!! how can we stop this??

at the moment the ROAG seeding is an average of ALL the ROAG (only)events you have done. if you go to www.roag.co.za , login and go to your MY ROAG, you can look at the seeding index. we will be changing the calculation before Eston to be an average of the BEST 3 ROAG events. This will then be ongoing, and the index will be revised after each event. in the next month or so, we should have access to other event organisers data. we are hoping to tie up a relationship in the near future. this will mean ROAG data will be shared with other organisations and we will have data from Gauteng and other places as well. remember the ROAG index is NOT a ranking. there may be some people ahead or behind you that have acquired their index from shorter or longer distances. hope this helps.

so it seems. thanks for the encouragement.

Toti 69er was our first ROAD experience. what a shambles!! despite loud assurances that ROADIES are organised, we were unpleasantly surprised. what we learned was that we have to take a more "active" role in determining the procedure for registration at road races. At Golovane, the power cuts really put massive pressure on the whole registration process. what people cant seem to understand is that ROAG is responsible for ADMIN ONLY!! it is the EVENT ORGANISERS reponsibility to ensure there is power, backup power, venue etc. ROAG just does the work. we are finding is that people are relying more and more on ROAG to solve ALL their problems. riders are asking the ROAG ladies milions of questions at registration thereby delaying the whole process. the girls are there JUST to take entries and hand out stickers. not tell you how much single track there is on the course or where the toilets are etc! Riders are also falling into bad habits. they leave / lose / forget timing chips and number boards and then argue when ROAG asks them to pay for a replacement. RE ISSUING boards and chips adds unnceccesary time. because of the automated process now, riders are arriving later and later at registration. in the old days, riders arrived at least an hour before the start. now we are finding 70-80% of riders are arriving half an hour before registration closes. the solution is to have more ROAG girls at registration, but this costs money! if we increase the number of ROAG personnell, the rider will be paying ultimately. so, the best solution is for everybody to bring their brains to registration, make sure they have ALL their equipment, and to arrive early.

You must remeber Golovane is an exception here in KZN. the event is aimed at a specific market with an excellent meal and a live band thrown in. look at their entry fee last year? the event organisers response will be interesting. the Toti 69er is purely a case of trying to cover costs as far as i know. i personally attended the event this weekend, and i have never seen so many "officials" at an event - ever! apparently some or most? of them are paid to "enforce" the rules. its apparently one of the reasons why road racing is so expensive. according to the organisers, ROAG has been brought in to try and bring the cost of holding a Road race DOWN. Trust me, ROAG doesnt make money out of administering an event.

to the best of my knowledge, thats not correct. can you provide facts to support your statement? i do know that ROAG administered events have seen increased participation of between 50-100%.

sounds like the general consensus is that the split between Male and Female should be proportional. i believe the proportion in MTB is about 70/30 - Male / Female. for those events that are prepared to stick their necks out and support the ladies better, how can they encourage more female partcipation. and how about Female specific companies getting their acts together and sponsoring events?? somebody mentioned "wonderbra"? why dont they put some money behind their convictions. all very well to "demand / expect" equality - lets see some action.

I just spent the last few days up north in your smokey city discussing exactly this point. i had excellent meetings with Fritz Pienaar and others and believe that we are all talking the same language now. we agreed that it is imperative that our entry procedures and data is compatible so we can use each others results for seeding. hopefully in the next month or so we will be able to implement a system that is universal. watch this space!!

it is a problem when equal prize money is ofered and you dont get the support from the fairer sex. maybe the ratio idea is a good one. but it will be more like 80% - 20%. like to see the girls racing for that? or support the events more.

Devils advocate - maybe the reason nobody knows the top woman cyclist is because she cant promote herself as well as the men becasue she gets short changed?

This has probably been done before, but not in my time. whats the feeling on equal prize money for boys and girls??

Anybody ever done any of the Makadas adventures events in the Cape??

we must not confuse "registration / seeding" with "timing". the 2 functions are integral and very dependant on each other for success of either process, but at the same time are totally sepearate functions. a registration system is purely a function of capturing data. get this right and you can create a seeding and batch system. this information is then transferred to the timing company which can be ANYBODY. once you have accurate data from your registration process, the job of the timing company is that much easier. their results are entirely dependant on accurate information in. remember Sh.. in, ..IT out!! At present ROAG has a close alliance with MR Price who have very generously agreed to issue FREE timing chips to each rider where they are doing the timing. however, the ROAG system is not exclusive to any timing system. we already work with Elite Timing in KZN and can easily adapt our data to work with SST, CC or WT. ROAG is NOT a timing company or an event organiser. we are an EVENT ADMINISTRATION group who process data. we are very open to sharing this data with event organisers and timing companies and will do our best to facilitate easy registartion, seeding and batching and accurate information for time keepers. in an ideal world there would only be 1 registration procedure, 1 timing company etc. unfortunately, we all subscribe to a free market...........

come do the iLLOVO ESTON MTB CHALLENGE. best value you can get on a mountain bike. and its a great weekend away being in the GA school holidays. www.illovoestonmtb.co.za

Seeding MTB events is a must!! the bigger events are NON negotiable as far as we are concerned. Unfortnately its not as simple as one thinks. Just a few things to consider are the following: Comparable data - i cant take wessells data and feed it into my system because he uses different criteria to me, and i cant verify if John Smit is actuall the same guy as J Smit or not. Thats why we use ROAG numbers - its the same for every event. Different distances, difficulty, quality of field, multi stage events, teams etc. ROAG is doing their best to get something started. we are using a formula created by somebody way cleverer than me to create an index of a riders ability. soemhow these clever guys can tell you what your time on a 30km race would have been when compared to the winners time of say the 50km race. these indeces are averaged. this in theory should create a level playing field - or no bumps on the sigle track. Yes - at the moment ROAG is KZN based, however we would love to get involved elsewhere. we chatted to Wessell but nothing came of it. anybody else out there who wants to give ROAG a try??