[Event] Ronde Van Riebeek

[vulgar]

100miler.

Firstly I train my gat off to get a good result. LOL .

Not bothered with clutter, goody bags or medals or to criticize a WPoint.  

So hear me out bitch!

1. The lead group got to take a shortcut back onto the right route... The chasing group incl myself was told to turn back, at that stage there was a 2min gap. We did 165km meaning xtra 5km or 9min longer at avs spd off 31km/h meaning we(3others) could have finished inside top 10 as the dynamics wld have changed once you start hauling inn guys falling off the leadgroup.

2. How difficult is it to mark a route...Seriously????

N.B. To ALL EVENT Organizers! Chalk on the floor, a town resident or school kid/parent showing the way. Nothing like going wrong and you catch up with the peeps you just dropped....After we got onto the right route we still had a gate to open and a another wrong turn sign to navigate Yes or NO, lucky the groad just went dead into a vineyard. Must have been a sour farmer or some workers going to town that pulled this off. Swak

3.THEN! All of a sudden we have 2 marshals leading us...??? Later the guy on the scooter,cant call it a motorbike(185cc) left us...after 2nd tar section. 

4. Was plain sailing after the course corrections. Only along the railroad track,that was a miserable part of the course I.M.O, dongas off note and back markers of the short route you had to pass on a twee spoor...

5.Belgian beer aint NO farken Stella mate,thats what the Jobs/Chavs drink in GB for a piss up.

Leffe, Hoegaarden, Duval ,De **** ,Palm , Kriek trapist to name a few, at 360ne they had a beer truck on tap with some off the above. 

Totally saw the dream of the organizer for this event. IT was lekker to see so many peeps at the event. Thanks for making it NOT so expensive to enter. Some Org take the mickey. I am sure RVR Org will note the faults they made, wish them all the best for next year.

Western Cape Gravel cup event series;

RVR ,

The gallows,

The Cedar, Half distance

Boland gravel monster,

Prince george 100miler

 

 

[-Az-]

23 hours ago, Skubarra said:

Well they were following the marshall who also missed the turn-off, is it technically a short-cut if the marshalls gave you wrong instructions?

I was at the turn when the first guys passed me. The only instructions I gave was to turn around, I was misheard/ignored/not heard correctly 3 times.

I had the same maps/gpx as supplied to everyone but everyone went the wrong way initially.

A further 4 direction arrows had been altered after that one.

[-Az-]

7 minutes ago, vulgar said:

 

N.B. To ALL EVENT Organizers! Chalk on the floor, a town resident or school kid/parent showing the way. Nothing like going wrong and you catch up with the peeps you just dropped....After we got onto the right route we still had a gate to open and a another wrong turn sign to navigate Yes or NO, lucky the groad just went dead into a vineyard. Must have been a sour farmer or some workers going to town that pulled this off. Swak

3.THEN! All of a sudden we have 2 marshals leading us...??? Later the guy on the scooter,cant call it a motorbike(185cc) left us...after 2nd tar section. 

 

 

Yeah chalk will be the winner.

The other bike was a photographer.

[Shebeen]

29 minutes ago, -Az- said:

I was at the turn when the first guys passed me. The only instructions I gave was to turn around, I was misheard/ignored/not heard correctly 3 times.

I had the same maps/gpx as supplied to everyone but everyone went the wrong way initially.

A further 4 direction arrows had been altered after that one.

I have a basic Suunto gps watch. It has navigation on it but not turn by turn but i used it for the first time ever for a route. Luckily i got turned around and only did an extra 5km, from then I switched pages on the watch and could see where we needed to go back.

What about the okes with their R10k garmins, surely they tell you when you're off course?

 

FWIW, the actual route gpx emailed in the week was different to the screenshot on google earth on the website, so clearly there were some changes.

[Shebeen]

@SUPERMANTRI I see you've been active here, feel free to add anything further. I think people really want this to work and comments/complaints/criticism is in the right spirit.

[SUPERMANTRI]

Hey @Shebeen - the event organiser is aware and should respond shortly. For urgent matters please mail the organiser on info@capecrosstri.com 👌

[HubArch]

Hi guys, my name is Adriaan Theron and i am the organiser of the event. We have been organizing big events for over 6 years and never before have we had such bad luck in the run-up to an event. One of the big issues were that we were let down by a trusted ambulance service provider, which had a huge knock on effect on my roles for the day. Mistakes were made, I am truly sorry for any inconvenience and i strive to do better.

[Skubarra]

1 hour ago, vulgar said:

 

2. How difficult is it to mark a route...Seriously????

N.B. To ALL EVENT Organizers! Chalk on the floor, a town resident or school kid/parent showing the way. Nothing like going wrong and you catch up with the peeps you just dropped....After we got onto the right route we still had a gate to open and a another wrong turn sign to navigate Yes or NO, lucky the groad just went dead into a vineyard. Must have been a sour farmer or some workers going to town that pulled this off. Swak

 

I might make myself unpopular here but this is not the first time a route marking goes wrong on a cycling event, nor will it be the last time. As someone mentioned earlier this happened to the race leader at the 94.7 which is a mass participation event with closed roads so sometimes things go wrong. I have seen it happen at Sani2C and other bigger and better organised events as well.

We dont know if it's actually someone that stuffed up with the route markings or if it was sabotage - both can happen easily and sometimes the organiser have no choice to trust that the people responsible wont stuff up, you cant be everywhere and triple check everything.

If you race often its guaranteed to happen to you at some point, I guess its fine if you want to trash the organisers to get the disappointment out of your system but life is a little bit easier if you accept that this is part of cycling and some days things just wont go your way. Sure this mishap will be fixed next year or at the very least most of us will know the route better.

[HubArch]

Ps, as soon as we found out that the ambulances weren't on site we got one on the route immediately. We however had to wait for a second one to arrive before we could start the next batch of riders.

[Shebeen]

31 minutes ago, HubArch said:

Hi guys, my name is Adriaan Theron and i am the organiser of the event. We have been organizing big events for over 6 years and never before have we had such bad luck in the run-up to an event. One of the big issues were that we were let down by a trusted ambulance service provider, which had a huge knock on effect on my roles for the day. Mistakes were made, I am truly sorry for any inconvenience and i strive to do better.

Howzit.

I am a decent and fair human being and can forgive everything but the beer choice.

Please get proper Belgian beer next year. Here's a good place to start!

 

[HubArch]

I'm not making this up, we had a proper Belgian Beer company lined up who ghosted us when they found out they had to apply for a liquor license. Had to rope in SAB who stepped up and also very kindly provided all the seating and umbrellas.

[Shebeen]

4 minutes ago, HubArch said:

I'm not making this up, we had a proper Belgian Beer company lined up who ghosted us when they found out they had to apply for a liquor license. Had to rope in SAB who stepped up and also very kindly provided all the seating and umbrellas.

In that case, all is forgiven!

[HubArch]

Regarding the altered Route Markers. I personally drove the whole route the morning before the start. Someone changed those markers after i checked them. When the lead bike realised they had been altered during the race, the lead bike corrected it. I Immediately drove out to that point, and saw that they had been altered again for a second time within 20 minutes. We had all the farmers permission to traverse their land, even though this happened on a public road. We learn from this, i like the chaulk idea, and i know marshals are ideal, but difficult on a limited budget.

[Mamil]

53 minutes ago, HubArch said:

Regarding the altered Route Markers. I personally drove the whole route the morning before the start. Someone changed those markers after i checked them. When the lead bike realised they had been altered during the race, the lead bike corrected it. I Immediately drove out to that point, and saw that they had been altered again for a second time within 20 minutes. We had all the farmers permission to traverse their land, even though this happened on a public road. We learn from this, i like the chaulk idea, and i know marshals are ideal, but difficult on a limited budget.

Chalk is great. And perhaps a marker like a ribbon or reflective tape tied to a fence post or a bush 100 Meters after a turn to confirm that you're on the right route. I always find that quite reassuring on a long ride that confirms I'm on the right route.

[Anton Kruyshaar]

On 5/22/2023 at 5:21 PM, Wane Rossouw said:

More riding less moaning - I've seen your results - give the events guys a break. So much negativity on here. I loved the event, so nice to be out and able to ride. 

Fully agree there were aspects of the day that were not what I would have wanted however both my partner and I thoroughly enjoyed the event. We are looking forward to next year's race.

[SSCC]

Totally agree with the less moaning comment. Events are hard to organize and run and **** goes wrong.

BTW there are very few places in the world where riders are spoilt for off road race choices like they are in the Western Cape. For comparison a gravel event like this would cost R3k to R4k to enter in the States based on exchange rate. If you calculate it on actual cost of living in both countries it's more like R1,600 so R590 is pretty cheap. So forget about trying to get a free entry because you had to wait on the start line and support the people that put on these events.