KingZA

Is this the right thread for the M-Net Cycle Tour?

D = 25.00 - 29.00 Changing winners times is bizarre if you ask me. I think they should have left the riders index as it was and then just keep the group breakpoints dynamic to constantly balance all the groups. That way top X percent are A, next X percent are B etc etc

What are those walkers doing on your cycle path? The nerve

The penalty points still get awarded afterwards. It's the change in the Beta that caused it. I think part of it is them fixing the "Bonus Seeding" that they started giving out as part of the build up to last years CTCT. These bonuses where built into the Beta instead of a separate data field or negative value on the Penalty field. Some maths whizz could be trying to balance out the seeded riders more evenly across all the groups Anyway, it is what it is.

Sigh. They've adjusted the beta of every race I've done since November 2017 so all my effort to get to C group has been chucked out the window. Now I'm back in F which is where I was when I was significantly slower I don't understand the need to go and change historic data like that

Me

The ride was awesome and I enjoyed the slight route changes from last year which cutout the sandy sections. The bike parks were also a major improvement on the year before so well done the the organisers on that. I've got 2 gripes which leaves me in two minds about entering next year... The food and beer at the finish was stupidly expensive. R 50 a beer and R 50 a boerrie roll is crazy. I had my family come out for the finish and the money I brought was gone in the blink of an eye. It's fine having vendors that charge that but then give us some choice with other vendors who price their goods reasonably and cater for a family. Lastly the fact that I wasn't allowed to walk with my son and my bike back to the car via Spier is just plain stupid. Instead they force us to walk the long way round through the muddy path that everybody took to get to the start/finish. I'm pretty sure that somebody walking with their bike after the majority of people have already left is not going to deprive another individual of their great Spier experience.

Apart from the seeding mess up I'm quite looking forward to this one. It's probably because of the beer at the end! Hope everyone has a safe and enjoyable ride

Pity I'm away otherwise i'd join in on the fun

Cool thanks. We probably rode together until near the top of Smits then. I'll upload the long video during the week and I'm sure you'll spot yourself in it. Its from Paradise motors through until the bottom of Smits when I heard the unmistakable sound of the battery dying.

This whole post made me lol. Not due to your misfortune but your style of writing is pretty funny and makes a good read.

Funny you mention that. I thought is was also super random and it looked like it was meant for cars that wouldn't exist on a full road closure course. Anyway, like I said in the description in the video. Noticeable improvements particularly with the refreshment area at the finish so kudos to the organisers.

Welcome to the funride world champs, hopefully we'll see you again next year. Just a hint, next year take the M3 as you'll be more sheltered in a group I was 1F and by the sounds of it we did the same as most other groups with braking and a concertina effect. Eventually this led to a crash near the end of the M3. There were others but this is the worst that I saw closeup... These poor riders must have a few roasties as we were going about 38 Km/h at the time.

Why's everyone so stressed about a cancellation? The wind will be chilled in town and the pros and first X groups are going to deal with the wind in the Deep South like any other windy ride that's been dished out to anyone training here for like the whole of Feb. So the way I see it, all the JOC will see for the first, say, 3 hours of the event is that everything is just peachy.

Got the Lyne Holy Rail & Storage Box for my roadie. I considered signing up to attend Harvard while I figured out how to get everything to actually fit well. Then I figured I'm already riding in the dark in the mornings so I should get a decent light.

It's to try and make the start chutes easy for everybody from 2A down. Those holding pens keep the same letter for the morning and then they just increment the number as they load the next batch of participants. 1M and better are different as they all load up along the path to the starting line. Pretty good system IMO as once you understand it you'll never need a map or have to ask for directions.

I wouldn't stress so much about the seeding thing and unless there's a mathematical error (I've picked up one of these a few years ago) just ride with how you've been seeded. Odds are that if you ride a few races throughout the year your seeding will reflect your ability and will match you with similar riders. I will admit though, they made a bit of a blunder with the Beta for the 99er as it wasn't as tough as that index indicates and I don't recall it being any harder than the previous 2 years I've ridden it. This has pushed me up quite nicely but I suspect that my group will have the "real" 1Fs who will drop us come Edinburgh Drive and then the "99er" 1Fs who will hopefully all ride together until at least Cape Point.

Yeah, I'm just pulling everyone's legs. You can go and remove your entry from the classifieds now!

Long term weather predictions are starting to come out...

I'm about 99% sure the camera was off at the time Best I go check before I get dished out some hill repeats or something

For the most part I found that everybody behaved themselves back in the alphabet soup. Some of the roads are pretty narrow and once we merged with the short route there was absolutely no hope of staying purely in the left lane.

Here's my little clip of the day. I started in E group which was mostly calm until the Pure Savage gents from G group came rolling through between Fisantekraal and the R44. A few minutes of huffing and puffing as they laid down the hammer before they dropped the bulk of us. I'm guessing that a few people from our group managed to stick with them. The rest of the ride I just stayed up near the front of the group and finished 17/76 which I'm super stoked with

Does everyone who collected their race number enjoy their new identity? Bit of a POPI whoopsie ????

I don't think those seeding indexes are final as its the mechanism from last year which has just continued to work off the automated systems in place. They're still going to jimmy rig the whole thing with the bonus seeding for some riders and will likely waive/reduce the penalties on some of the other older rides depending on their official seeding classification.

If they stopped the elite group a 3rd time it would have improved my future seeding. I must bribe that Mazda dude a bit more next time