Absa Cape Epic 2022

[DieselnDust]

2 hours ago, MORNE said:

A stamped medal and bragging rights?😅

in seriousness, it’s not that much going by google? Actually looks like the munga was more the one year bitcoin went through the roof lol

prize money take away for the international riders is a bit of a lottery if paid in ZAR

[Fred van Vlaanderen]

4 hours ago, Carmichael said:

My 4th one and have to say it was brutal, this ons hurts very deep. Maybe i just forgot how much the other hurts, also did the last 2 stages with a stomach bug , that just sucked big time had no power and had to take loo breaks en route. Had a high fever friday night and had to get pills from medi clinic sat morning and almost got pulled luckily i broke my fever with panados.

One thing that irritated me is that the route profile for each day was incorrect and elevation gain was incorrect , like stage 2 we were supposed to climb 2350, but ended almost on 3000m and that is from 4 of us 2 x garmin and 2 x suunto. 

 

i can se they are cutting costs each year.. 

congrats on pulling through!

[DieselnDust]

5 hours ago, Carmichael said:

My 4th one and have to say it was brutal, this ons hurts very deep. Maybe i just forgot how much the other hurts, also did the last 2 stages with a stomach bug , that just sucked big time had no power and had to take loo breaks en route. Had a high fever friday night and had to get pills from medi clinic sat morning and almost got pulled luckily i broke my fever with panados.

One thing that irritated me is that the route profile for each day was incorrect and elevation gain was incorrect , like stage 2 we were supposed to climb 2350, but ended almost on 3000m and that is from 4 of us 2 x garmin and 2 x suunto. 

 

i can se they are cutting costs each year.. 

well done, another finish under the belt.👍

The route profiles are pretty accurate if they didn't change anything after the decals were printed. This year there was still minor route changes with a couple of weeks before the event. Probably due to the short time between the events. I never bothered with them anyway and kept the last set as souvenirs for my daughter. She stuck them all over the headboard on her bed.

 

[TIB]

On 3/28/2022 at 9:05 AM, DieselnDust said:

Spoke to a few folks who have done many,

including the some or all of the first 5,…. Toughest since 2008 and comparable to 2012. Most said it was due to the heat at the prologue and stage1 and the headwind  toward the end of stage 2. The rollers killer many legs and cut off was extended to 19:00. 
after stage 1 many were enquiring about drips at the medics tent.

that said it’s also hard to really quantify toughness of the epic. People  tend to look at distance and climbing and go “oh wow that’s hard/easy” while not considering the terrain. Use 2018 route as an example only 13500m ascent but that doesn’t talk to the more than 100km of sand the route went through . It’s always tough but I think 2022 was the toughest since 2008 for various reasons. Just looking at the drop out %

Official 10 Year Cape Epic Toughness Table..... 2008 had a 27% dropout, a slight outlier, 9 days riding

The slowest times were generally just over double the winning time!

[Tatt]

On 3/27/2022 at 8:57 PM, love2fly said:

My understanding is that some riders, probably Nino etc, skim the tread some and/ride special prototypes even lighter than OEM. Nino is one of the GOATS so you can't right off the Maxxis brand just because of some poor decision making. I won't ride any other tyre and have had to buy my 3rd pack of plugs as they dry out from old age. 

Nino should learn about duct tape 😂😂.. Works a treat with plugs and got me over Rusty Gates and home in 2014...

[Tatt]

On 3/28/2022 at 12:26 PM, eala said:

If stage one was a cool day things would have been very different for many teams .Last year stage one two and three were really technically difficult but the weather was perfect .There were still a lot of riders that did not make cutoff .If those days were really hot like at 2017 Tankwa that use most of the same trails ,things would have been just as bad like at Tankwa day two when the temperature peeked at 46 degrees celsius .One riders also died that day and many riders ,including me did not ride the next day due to exhaustion 

Agreed! Heat played a massive role.

And that 2017 Tankwa was hectic, and a heap of epic teams who were doing the ride pulled out at WP3. I was stupid enough to go to the school at the bottom of the forest climb, and then decided to call it a day and go drink beer!! The 2014 Tankwa was even hotter if I remember correctly..

[Eldron]

1 hour ago, Tatt said:

Nino should learn about duct tape 😂😂.. Works a treat with plugs and got me over Rusty Gates and home in 2014...

The words Rusty and Gate, when combined still make my legs quake and my heart rate hit 300.  My partner that year was nearly 16k lighter than me and climbed like the love child of Michael Rasmussen and a Mountain Goat.

[Shebeen]

19 hours ago, DieselnDust said:

prize money take away for the international riders is a bit of a lottery if paid in ZAR

looking at this.

SCR got R300k for winning GC

R5k for two stage wins each, probably ~R10k for the other stages

so i don't think that's too bad in their case, they can cover the cost of the trip, pay Herr Baum some pocket money for the trip to buy Birkenstocks at the V&A and have some left over for the robben island museum, Boulders and Kirstenbosch tours. They probably even have enough left over to buy strava premium

 

 

 

[DieselnDust]

4 minutes ago, Shebeen said:

looking at this.

SCR got R300k for winning GC

R5k for two stage wins each, probably ~R10k for the other stages

so i don't think that's too bad in their case, they can cover the cost of the trip, pay Herr Baum some pocket money for the trip to buy Birkenstocks at the V&A and have some left over for the robben island museum, Boulders and Kirstenbosch tours. They probably even have enough left over to buy strava premium

 

 

 

They already have Strava Preium

[The Ouzo]

22 minutes ago, DieselnDust said:

They already have Strava Preium

but are they bike hub plus members ?

[Ozzie NL]

Drop out percentages based on Epic numbers over the years. Took no of teams finishing event over no of prologue finishers

[TheoG]

Its obvious, this year was simply brutal ...  

[DieselnDust]

19 minutes ago, Ossie NL said:

Drop out percentages based on Epic numbers over the years. Took no of teams finishing event over no of prologue finishers

a massive ryder to consider is that 2006, 2007, 2008 if you were not a UCI team, i yor team mate dropped out you could for a new team with another individual rider. This reduces the number of teams dropping out considerably.

For the 2009 to present races, If you take the number of individual finishers and divide that by 2, then add that number back to the finishing teams list it will normalise the data to be more reflective of true difficulty.

[Ozzie NL]

13 minutes ago, DieselnDust said:

a massive ryder to consider is that 2006, 2007, 2008 if you were not a UCI team, i yor team mate dropped out you could for a new team with another individual rider. This reduces the number of teams dropping out considerably.

For the 2009 to present races, If you take the number of individual finishers and divide that by 2, then add that number back to the finishing teams list it will normalise the data to be more reflective of true difficulty.

Good point on the earlier years but  as far as I can see the data for 2099 and beyond is comparable as I did not add the solo finishers back in for any of the years

Edited March 30, 2022 by Ossie NL

[DieselnDust]

11 minutes ago, Ossie NL said:

Good point on the earlier years but  as far as I can see the data for 2099 and beyond is comparable as I did not add the solo finishers back in for any of the years

That’s correct you only would need to normalise 2006 through 2008.

however you don’t know how many teams are reconstituted teams so you can’t separate those for those three years but you can bring the other years into line by creating a number for potential reconstituted teams from the individual finishers and then recalculating the drop out rates

[Jewbacca]

Seems like a lot of effort for something that subjective.

Much like the various GOAT sportser debates, I don't think you can ever actually come to a definitive conclusion.

You might find that people pulled out this year more than any other because the last 2 years had them living closer to breaking point and it didn't take much to push them past their limit. 

I know I'm definitely a lot less robust in nature after the last 2 years of anxiety and uncertainty.