[Event] NISSAN TRAILSEEKER #3 Down & Dirty

[Nofearnofun]

I think if this series wants to go for gold (accepting so many entries) they need to increase the time between groups, decrese the amount of riders in the groups, have a plan B (incase an obstacle fails) and possibly a team on call to repair plan A while plan B is in use. The best idea I have for the organisers would be to take a page from the book of other events I have seen and to hold thier event over two days enabling them to space everything out more.

 

Over all I actually enjoyed the day out and took the bottle necks with a pinch of salt.

[Squier]

 

 

We doing one on the 22nd September if you keen... otherwise enjoy. Sorry to have missed you

 

there is a race at vg on 22 sept.

 

I enjoyed it. Flat out racing for 70 km. My mates started in a different batch so i was chasing and grabbing wheels the whole way to try and stay out of the wind. Good fun! With the course being so flat the race was super fast, which made it tough in its own right.

 

The broken bridge was unfortunate and could've been handled better (diverted sooner) but other than that it was a great day out!

[jcza]

there is a race at vg on 22 sept.

 

Which race is on at VG on 22nd? I know about the race at NF on 22nd.

[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.

[Li Mu Bai]

Thanks for the comments Fritz.

The reason you have so many entrants is that your Series are generally well managed and any problems are improved on.

This is encouraging to bring me back again in future.

[Karooryder]

"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".

 

Could have fooled me...trying to figure out how the SAS system calculates seeding batches is about as hard as fishing a Vicks chappie out of Patricia Lewis' hair...

 

As someone noted elsewhere on this forum, there are enough great MTB events in Gauteng - time to start voting with our cleats...

[Backpacker]

I have received a result despite not allowing them to scan my number board?? Thanks to the two guys on the 40km who firstly helped me out with a bomb as I'd used mine on a puncture at the start, who tried to fix the slash in my tubeless tyres which did not work and then offered me a tube so that I could at least continue and get to the finish. I was sincerely humbled by your generosity and at least managed to get some training in. I did wait at the finish line in the hope of seeing you to return your tube but it was like looking for a needle in a haystack.

[Li Mu Bai]

most punctures I have seen in a race since Honda Mountain Trophy.

[Muddy]

"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".

 

Could have fooled me...trying to figure out how the SAS system calculates seeding batches is about as hard as fishing a Vicks chappie out of Patricia Lewis' hair...

 

As someone noted elsewhere on this forum, there are enough great MTB events in Gauteng - time to start voting with our cleats...

 

The process and formula used to calculate the seeding is explained very well on the SA Seeding site. If you do a search on thehub I'm sure you will find that this has also been posted on the forum. Yes I've had previous issues with my seeding but it's been explained and/or resolved upon query.

[Stefanh]

most punctures I have seen in a race since Honda Mountain Trophy.

 

 

And bottles in the first 2km…

[divernick]

So a quad bike broke the bridge?

 

Muppets.

[Karooryder]

The process and formula used to calculate the seeding is explained very well on the SA Seeding site. If you do a search on thehub I'm sure you will find that this has also been posted on the forum. Yes I've had previous issues with my seeding but it's been explained and/or resolved upon query.

 

Not going to start an SAS discussion here again...yes I have followed the numerous rants about Trailseeker seeding on here and yes, we all know how the calculations are supposedly made. I was seeded in the wrong batch for every single Trialseeker this year and so was every single guy in our training group (eventually resolved upon query every time, but there has to be something wrong if they can't get it right the first time). Over and out.

[MudMuppet]

So a quad bike broke the bridge?

 

Muppets.

 

Watch the Muppet insults please, :)

[jcmeyerSS]

 

"Handful of shimano" hahahhaha.

It had to be a handfull of shimano cause a handfull of Avid doesn't do anything at all. Got very intimate with a tree coming down breedts Thanx to my Ex-avids.

Haha

[Smolly]

 

It had to be a handfull of shimano cause a handfull of Avid doesn't do anything at all. Got very intimate with a tree coming down breedts Thanx to my Ex-avids.

Haha

Thanks for reminding me of the required upgrade

[jcmeyerSS]

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.

There is a away to see who went around the last bottleneck. Everyone that didn't take a shortcut would have a photo of them going over the big tree bridge. Of course this would be a ridiculous task to match up numbers and photos but anyway, your races are great and you have an awesome team just think you missed the mark on this one a bit.

I am looking forward to VG