KingZA

What @NC_lurker said! Just put a bigger crankset on the gravel bike and you'll be sorted for your needs. You might need a longer chain. Personally I would keep the small crankset for when you decide to do gravel adventures/races. Swapping a GRX crankset is quick and easy.

Oh flip was that you?! I was in that group but thankfully at the front for that turn. Heard it happen and then looked back to see it. Was wondering how on earth that could happen in such a small group and on a slow corner.

This thread has never been so quiet. Everybody must be checking the weather reports for the 50th time today and taking the last of their Ketone & EPO stash. Good luck to everybody that's riding and enjoy the day

Does anybody know if there's lentills in the goodie bags this year?

The train timetable is available here: https://capetowncycletour.com/system/refinery/resources/W1siZiIsIjIwMjYvMDMvMDMvMTAvMjEvNDYvYzQ4ZmJmMGItMWJmNi00ZTJlLTgyYjgtYzdiM2VkNjIxYTUyL0NBUEUgVE9XTiBDWUNMRSBUT1VSIEZJTkFMIFNFUlZJQ0UgMDggTWFyY2ggMjAyNiAueGxzeCJdXQ/CAPE TOWN CYCLE TOUR FINAL SERVICE 08 March 2026 .xlsx

Checkout South Side Cycles who ride from The Active Hobo in Westlake. They have a ride every day of the week often with a group for beginners and then another group thats a bit faster. Most of the time it's on the roads but there is a MTB ride about once a week.

Seeding has been updated to include these results. Thank you @Pure Savage, you took me from an index of 23 to lucky number 13 👌👌

I think some people from K and maybe other groups opted for the 79km option midway through the race 😂😂

The touchscreens are great until it's raining. If they're wet it's a lottery to see if you can swipe to another data screen or not. I ride with a 1040 which doenst have any backup buttons that you can use instead. My workaround thesedays is to have an aux shifter button programmed to go to the next data screen.

OMG this is sooo rad!! Please please please can you do it for all the start groups coz I was way down in BB

Anybody have a list of the Start Groups and Times? I need to plan the options available to me 😅

Excellent registration. Venue is lekka and everybody there was super friendly and helpful. Thank you @NicholasH & team

I've got a pair of 60mm spacers that I could sell to you. Just DM me if that's the size you're interested in

I've heard that the 2nd half of the field is dealing with some challenging weather. Super hot (which I suppose is expected) block headwinds and then a sorm with a bit of rain to round off the experience. I'd love to complete this one year but crisis, I dont think I could deal with all of that for so long 😅

Who was the ambulance for?

Well for @Zama7 riding so infrequently it would make sense to be a wheelset with tubes so there's going to be higher preassures and more road buzz. If I was riding 4x a year it would be a cheap tyre in a 28mm if my bike would take it and when it perishes from heat/standing i'd replace it.

Have a look at the SP Connect range. They have lots of options and I know peple who have used them without any issues.

There a various screen layouts to choose from, each with a different quantity of data fields, so you need to pick the layout that you like. From there you can populate each block with the data field that you want. It's all done in the Profile > Data Screens section

This is the jersey in normal daylight and all 3 of those prints are reflective. There's also a big logo on the back but I wont post that as it's the same as these. And then this is the same jersey in a shady area under a camera flash. At night those prints would reflect the same under a vehicle light.

You can get Ciovita to put a reflective print on most of their kit. I have an off the shelf Tinta jersey with a brand logo & company logo done as a reflective print. Have a look at their Fusion Custom process. I can share pics if you'd like to see what it looks like

Yip, I definitely don't blame them for trying either and really hope that they succeed with good events in the future. I did their 2024 event and loved it. Because of this I have some insight into costs and would guess that their breakeven for this event is about 8 riders. Essentially it's just the tracking which is R 1000 max and then travel and accomodation for 3 or 4 people. There's at least 5 riders doing it this year (More once you start adding their subscription riders) which is why I say it's fine for them not to travel to the event and make a loss. Just do live tracking and encourage participants to send in some pics and vids for content. I hear you on the grey area of unsupported races but they do make it abundantly clear to participants that there is zero support out there and you agree to have insurance including rescue and evacuation. For me, I'm happy to accept all risks so it works and for others who arent keen to do that then they can skip these sort of things.

I can understand that there's nobody at the start or along the route and that's how these rides have mostly been. The core of this series is about unassisted bikepacking/riding which is very cool. Some people will line up to race it and other will take a few days to have a social ride. That said, it's not great for how this was handled especially because people have been training for months for this. Surely there should still be a tracking app/map so we can follow the riders? The R2500 "event" fee was difficult enough to justify before this

HT MTB with Dropbars is the perfect weapon!

Don't think of it like you're starting at the back. More like you have your own ebike race and you're in the first group which, in this case, happens to be the last group as well.

Personally, I'd far rather do a gravel bike packing trip with some mates than this stage race thing. It's considerably cheaper and, for me, way more fun. Maybe I'm just not enough of a racing snake. The only real downside is that you have to plan it all yourself but if that's too much of a mission there are guys out there that organise everything and take groups out for these trips.