Tristand

While I have been mostly impressed with the organisation I do have a major gripe. There is no water handed out to rides at the water points, meaning unsupported riders have to stop or dehydrate. And stopping is not really an option if you are racing.

That was a sobering, brutal ride. Was going strong until Du Toitskloof. The mountain broke me.

The road users in Paarl are really polite, kinda been feeling bad about my "assertive" Johannesburg driving habits,

There was a great deal of unhappiness in the air. The schedule came out a little earlier on FB, but still.

We could have received our time trial start times a bit earlier. The SMS only came through at 22:30 on a day after a long race, IE after bed time. The pace in the amateur bunch was definitely harder than most races, got dropped 55km in. The amateur bunch finished barely later than the VA's.

The entry and exit to the venue was crazy dangerous. Saw so many close calls.

Well it is decided! A crash diet will be needed before Tour of Good Hope in light of how brutal that was.

My aim was to get my first ever sub-3 and started in the E bunch. I was hoping for 2:58 or something like that so getting 2:45 means that I am over the moon. How was that shallow pot hole at the bottom of the big hill on Jan Smuts? The one by the zoo. It was a close call.

In principal every product is supposed to be tested. In practice the actual RF module in the device is often "off the shelf" so only that module needs certification. That scenereo is common with GSM chipsets used in 3g cards, routers and security products. All consumer electronics also require an EMC certificate to prove that they don't cause electeonic interference. But that is a lot less strict. As you pointed out, it is unlikely the flee market bluetooth gadgets have their certificates. They are not technically legal but nobody is going to chase them down either. Sent from my SM-G920F using Tapatalk

There are still restrictions within the ISM band for instance maximum permissible transmitter power. Naturally strict frequency band adherence needs to proven as well.

It has finally arrived!!! And murphy's law I am down with the flu...

The problem with life bans based purely on a single positive test is that false positives do happen. Rare, but not non existant. There was even a comment in the statement regarding the Bloem lab that one of the aspects in the failed lab cert was false positives. I am all for banning organised dopers from sport, never mind just races, like Lance but a once off lab result is not reliable enough.