[Event] 99er Cycle Tour

[Patchelicious]

27 minutes ago, ChrisF said:

 

The modern e-road-bikes are so far removed from the definition of an e-bike, i.e. :

- MAX 250 power assist

- Power assist limited to 25 or 32km/h

 

I am conflicted on these new era e-race-bikes .... on the one hand I wish I could afford it .... then I remember two very real realities .... the CTCT approach allows FUN RIDERS on ebikes to join an hour after the main groups, they make it clear they dont want e-racers .... then the reality that sooner rather than later photos/videos are going to pop up of e-racers dragging buddies into prize winning positions .....

 

Going to suck big time when the organisers are forced into a corner because of 1 or 2 e-riders ....

Not a chance they are limited, well the ones that I saw weren’t. 
 

I started in H group for the Trilogy as I haven’t raced in SA in years, I don’t have a seeding. There were lots of e-bikes in the start shoot with us, which wasn’t a problem. As long as people got out on their bikes.

When we started I tried to shoot off the front (it was going to be a ITT from back there anyway) and averaged around 41kph for the first 10km trying to keep up with two Sworks Levos, ridden by two very fit looking dudes who wouldn’t otherwise “need” an eBike from what I saw.
These bikes were NOT limited to 30 something. Once we hit the first drag at Fisantekraal they could keep up the 40kph as if the road was flat and I obviously couldn’t sustain the 500w needed to stay with them up there….

Now to be clear, I couldn’t care less about time/placing etc I was just riding for the fun of it. But there are clearly people who will do what they can to get “a time”, probably the same type of people that inflate  their golf handicaps 😉

Edited February 10 by Patchelicious

[Paul Ruinaard]

14 hours ago, Patchelicious said:

Not a chance they are limited, well the ones that I saw weren’t. 
 

I started in H group for the Trilogy as I haven’t raced in SA in years, I don’t have a seeding. There were lots of e-bikes in the start shoot with us, which wasn’t a problem. As long as people got out on their bikes.

When we started I tried to shoot off the front (it was going to be a ITT from back there anyway) and averaged around 41kph for the first 10km trying to keep up with two Sworks Levos, ridden by two very fit looking dudes who wouldn’t otherwise “need” an eBike from what I saw.
These bikes were NOT limited to 30 something. Once we hit the first drag at Fisantekraal they could keep up the 40kph as if the road was flat and I obviously couldn’t sustain the 500w needed to stay with them up there….

Now to be clear, I couldn’t care less about time/placing etc I was just riding for the fun of it. But there are clearly people who will do what they can to get “a time”, probably the same type of people that inflate  their golf handicaps 😉

Truth be told unless you are riding at the front of a race as a pro or in the age seeded racing bunches, you are riding for fun. Fun rides - get it. Some see it. alot more serious than others but its menat to be fun.

WRT ebikes the differences are vast. I have ebikes so i know all the ins and outs.

Typically the likes of an EMTB is limited either at 25 kph or 32,1 - depending on which regime you are obeying - Europe or USA.

Most bikes - any Levo or Scott MTB is limited at that speed. So on a long fast drag your nimble ebike turns in to a brick at that speed and you start working hard to keep up at any speed above that. 

Now for the road bikes - my Creo SL is limted at 42,1 kph which is fast. Other mates have similar and theirs are the same. So you can cruise along on this machine at pretty high speed and have an awesome ride with really fast bunches you could never normally ride or race with. 

I have pulled many a bunch of mates home in to a stiff SE wind in paarl here.

Now it starts getitng tricky when you start on the power outputs of all those bikes.

My Gen 2 Levo SL has a maximum power of 320 watts and the Gen 1 Creo is 280 watts. Thats in turbo - with about 50nm of torque give or take.

That means that these bikes make you work quite a bit - they arent motorbikes. You need to be quite strong to ride one of them up a steep slope. Thats the idea with SL - smaller batteries and motors as well as lighter weights. 

But then you get to the New Levos and the Scotts - these are in the league of 550 watts to 800 watts with big batteries. My wife has one. These things are powerful and have up to 100 nm of torque.

The impact is that on a steep climb even in eco which is at 30% you are getting 150 to 240 watts of assistance. Full gas in turbo they are very powerful and thats why they go uphill so fast. If you gas a full fat ebike up a hill you climb like Pogacar. Its crazy. My wife can run away from me on a climb in Trail (level 2) when i am flat out and redlining my heart rate on my bike - and she is not even working.

IN the CTCT women on Scotts were passing me like I was looking for parking and I was at turbo and giving it full gas on my Creo.

THen there are the guys that pay for the chipping to be removed - there is a dude who has a Specialized Gen 4 Sworks (i think its 660 watts and 100+nm) that has claimed all the EBIKE Koms on Paarl rock and surrounds - he passed us going uphill at 36 kmh ave speed from strava for the segment on a steep section towards the mast. 

If you remove the limits then its just a function of battery power. I have found a dude who can make an extender battery which basically doubles you capacity of our 720 w/h battery on the Levo - so you canrace in Turbo for hours - they were being used in Race to the Sun last year. 

So you get a complete mix of all of this and people are always tweaking, so no wonder some of the people are fast as they have massively powerful bikes which pulls them in to race situations where they have never been before and have no experience. 

FWIW I intentionally wil sit at the back of groups and am always aware of unabalancing a race by pulling a group up a hill on my bike if i am in a bunch. Thats just me. I am sure there are others who just go full gas till they see the chequered flag or the battery dies.

2 years ago when the limits was 3h50 for ebikes for CTCT i saw guys on ebikes do this and posisbly use two batteries - they were in the 2h40 mark which was just crazy.

Hope that explains it and helps people to understand. Some ebikers are just old dudes who are happy to ride with their mates again and be able to hang on to the groups - like me. Dont demonise us.

[Skubarra]

15 hours ago, DieselnDust said:

I was chatting to one of the driver of a car following the A group and they said that the B group had nearly caught “A” about 5km from the Adderley Road turn. Like they had 20m to close that gap. The “A” group had nearly caught % at this time but we put foot and dropped B like a bad habit or rather they couldn’t hang on any longer as the gradient started to get a bit more severe. We Put 2 min into them by the finish line but they still held about a 1min advantage due to their early efforts. There was definitely higher seeded riders participating in B . Chapeau to them , their luck, they had the engines to pull the group that hard.

My biased comment based on years of PPA funride participation in  the lower alphabet soup groups 🙃

Usually at the funrides almost every group has 3 or 4 worker bees doing 90% of the work, a few okes who will put in a turn or 2 and 90% passengers either just hanging on or saving themselves for the heroic sprint finish.

All that happenend in B on Saturday is you had a few mates rotating up front along with the few worker B's and suddenly you are the fastest group bar the elites, easy, no heroics or anything special. 

"A" bunch had plenty strong riders, B should have never came close, if they could put 2 minutes into B over the last 15km they could have easily put 10 minutes into B (or more) over the full distance if enough guys consistently worked up front. 

I know this is never going to change but it's a a pet peeve of mine that the strong social riders treat PPA races as league races riding for position instead of working together with others in the group and actually improving their seeding.

PS - gap between A and B wasn't quite 20 meters but your point stands 🙂

[DieselnDust]

39 minutes ago, Skubarra said:

My biased comment based on years of PPA funride participation in  the lower alphabet soup groups 🙃

Usually at the funrides almost every group has 3 or 4 worker bees doing 90% of the work, a few okes who will put in a turn or 2 and 90% passengers either just hanging on or saving themselves for the heroic sprint finish.

All that happenend in B on Saturday is you had a few mates rotating up front along with the few worker B's and suddenly you are the fastest group bar the elites, easy, no heroics or anything special. 

"A" bunch had plenty strong riders, B should have never came close, if they could put 2 minutes into B over the last 15km they could have easily put 10 minutes into B (or more) over the full distance if enough guys consistently worked up front. 

I know this is never going to change but it's a a pet peeve of mine that the strong social riders treat PPA races as league races riding for position instead of working together with others in the group and actually improving their seeding.

PS - gap between A and B wasn't quite 20 meters but your point stands 🙂

Yes indeed "A" did have many moments of base training ride. There were some very  serious attempts at creating a break followed by the usual sit up and crack a few jokes. There was enough fire power in the group to ride a 2h12 but that crash at 1,5km did hurt the momentum quite a lot as the group that escaped was initially quite small. The rest burned the matches to catch back on

[DM90]

Just dropping a comment to say thanks to the event organisers and fellow cyclists.

I have always been more of MTB rider, but with the recent addition of a gravel bike I decided to give some road events a go and subsequently also entered the CTCT. It has been a lot of fun so far and I am wondering why I never tried it sooner!

Had a blast in group N, thought I would not be able to keep with the pace at times, but proper fueling definitely saved my day. Thanks to everyone in the group who was accommodating with a group riding novice.

[EJC]

2 hours ago, DieselnDust said:

Yes indeed "A" did have many moments of base training ride. There were some very  serious attempts at creating a break followed by the usual sit up and crack a few jokes. There was enough fire power in the group to ride a 2h12 but that crash at 1,5km did hurt the momentum quite a lot as the group that escaped was initially quite small. The rest burned the matches to catch back on

I don't know maybe if more guys worked 2h12 could have happened but for me there was very little sit up and chill times. Worked big part of the day with I would say at least 7-10 of the same faces off/on pretty well. I recall maybe 2-3 attempts at a break. The rest guys were just not following wheels on the rotate through, so I don't count those. I feel like the group worked pretty well together overall.

[Pure Savage]

👀

 

[Pure Savage]

20 hours ago, DieselnDust said:

Sounds a bit too ….Savage….

maybe a good workable idea is take a riders best three results over a 6month and average them out  instead of your best result. That way okes in A dropping back will drop to B , the beneficiaries will rise and everyone meets in B. Maybe the A okes won’t like the loss so much and be more reluctant to drop back to slower groups till they restore their A status. They wouldn’t want to be handed fines at the pre DC dinner 🤣

I think you onto something there though, there needs to be some sacrifice from the A people drop backers. I mean, unless its a real mate, I am not dropping back to get a worse personal seeding and doing more work.

[Pure Savage]

5 hours ago, Skubarra said:

My biased comment based on years of PPA funride participation in  the lower alphabet soup groups 🙃

Usually at the funrides almost every group has 3 or 4 worker bees doing 90% of the work, a few okes who will put in a turn or 2 and 90% passengers either just hanging on or saving themselves for the heroic sprint finish.

All that happenend in B on Saturday is you had a few mates rotating up front along with the few worker B's and suddenly you are the fastest group bar the elites, easy, no heroics or anything special. 

"A" bunch had plenty strong riders, B should have never came close, if they could put 2 minutes into B over the last 15km they could have easily put 10 minutes into B (or more) over the full distance if enough guys consistently worked up front. 

I know this is never going to change but it's a a pet peeve of mine that the strong social riders treat PPA races as league races riding for position instead of working together with others in the group and actually improving their seeding.

PS - gap between A and B wasn't quite 20 meters but your point stands 🙂

Think thats always a pet peeve, where there are 9 people rolling all day and then on the final drag, as if they sprinting for 174th place and go crazy, as if its Roubaix. 

[Charles71]

1 hour ago, Pure Savage said:

Think thats always a pet peeve, where there are 9 people rolling all day and then on the final drag, as if they sprinting for 174th place and go crazy, as if its Roubaix. 

This was my experience at Durbie Dash, put in a ton of work at the front with about 6-8 others only to get dropped by the bunch on Adderley cause they all kept their legs fresh for the "sprint". Anyway I still ended Top3 in my starting batch as we had caught the group ahead of us.

[Patchelicious]

10 hours ago, Paul Ruinaard said:

Some ebikers are just old dudes who are happy to ride with their mates again and be able to hang on to the groups - like me. Dont demonise us.

MOST eBikers are just folks wanting to have fun, and eBikes have certainly helped many people get out on the road, gravel, trails. My position on them has changed somewhat (as long as people don't use their eBike dishonestly)

Like I said, I actually couldn't care less. As long as you are having fun. 

Edited February 11 by Patchelicious

[Pure Savage]

13 hours ago, Patchelicious said:

MOST eBikers are just folks wanting to have fun, and eBikes have certainly helped many people get out on the road, gravel, trails. My position on them has changed somewhat (as long as people don't use their eBike dishonestly)

Like I said, I actually couldn't care less. As long as you are having fun. 

Think its just a safety thing, I find that if in a gravel/road ride the person has dropped handle bars its chilled. Find if they have MTB wide bars in a big group it gets a little sketchy. 

[openmind]

27 minutes ago, Pure Savage said:

Think its just a safety thing, I find that if in a gravel/road ride the person has dropped handle bars its chilled. Find if they have MTB wide bars in a big group it gets a little sketchy. 

I agree. MTB handlebars are almost twice as wide as road/gravel bars - they just don’t fit in a tight bunch without poking someone. The bunch then tends to make bigger gaps for them which messes with the bunch dynamics and safety. I love my MTB but I don’t think they belong in most gravel races. 
Also, gravel racing is largely replacing road racing, at least it is for me here in the Western Cape so my preference would be to limit gavel races to drop bars. Just a data point of one for race organisers, if you’re reading .

[ChaseTheAce]

Talking of group dynamics and not being formally taught at the "bunch riding school for kids who don't know how to ride and read the group dynamic good" Tongue in cheek here 😋.

What’s the unwritten bunch etiquette around moving up on the left side, inside the yellow line at the road edge?
My common sense says:
1. If there’s a natural flow happening on that side already, ja that's cool, you're moving with the flow, it is fine and predictable behaviour.
2. It’s better to leave a bit of buffer space near the edge for gravel, bumps, wiggles, etc.
3. Using that narrow space to squeeze into gaps to obtain positions doesn’t feel lekker on that side. If you need to do that, do it on the right where there’s more room and margin for safety - i.e. another lane. 

I am curious what the consensus on this is, and if my above perceptions ring true.

[The itch]

4 hours ago, ChaseTheAce said:

Talking of group dynamics and not being formally taught at the "bunch riding school for kids who don't know how to ride and read the group dynamic good" Tongue in cheek here 😋.

What’s the unwritten bunch etiquette around moving up on the left side, inside the yellow line at the road edge?
My common sense says:
1. If there’s a natural flow happening on that side already, ja that's cool, you're moving with the flow, it is fine and predictable behaviour.
2. It’s better to leave a bit of buffer space near the edge for gravel, bumps, wiggles, etc.
3. Using that narrow space to squeeze into gaps to obtain positions doesn’t feel lekker on that side. If you need to do that, do it on the right where there’s more room and margin for safety - i.e. another lane. 

I am curious what the consensus on this is, and if my above perceptions ring

Re your bunch etiquette,  left or right , it depends on the direction of the wind, the pointy end of the front of the bunch should in the direction of where the wind is coming from. There's only 1 reason why a rider should be moving up and that is to work and if that's the case then move up on the side which is protected from the wind 

[ChrisF]

1 hour ago, The itch said:

Re your bunch etiquette,  left or right , it depends on the direction of the wind, the pointy end of the front of the bunch should in the direction of where the wind is coming from. There's only 1 reason why a rider should be moving up and that is to work and if that's the case then move up on the side which is protected from the wind 

 

Very interesting statement, and alligns completely with what we see in the pro peleton.

 

Then again, those races have full road closures and have the option to "work with the wind".

 

For the local fun rides, every so often slow riders hear: "Keep LEFT..."  In this context it makes more sense for the slower riders to keep to the same side and allowing the faster riders space to have a clean race.

 

The sports starts when a rider was passed, now caught on the left .... now the group sits up and slows down while they wait for the next breakaway ..... I have once gone left into the gutter (wide cement section) and got back to my normal speed and passed the now slow group ....  Actually found myself in a similar spot on Saturday, except no shoulder to pass.  I litterally stood on the pegs and looked to the front and the back trying to figure out a solution.  Gent next to me obviously noticed, then when he looked at me I asked if he could open a gap so I can get out of the box.  Big thanks to him for helping me out.

 

In most cases, in these fun rides, the riders dont expect somebody to creep up on the left side ... be it the surprise factor, or simple reducing their space to avoid road issues, it feels sketchy at best.  Personally I avoid this as far as possible ... if a just one to pass, then I will communicate my intentions and only do so when I get the nod.... Tot old, I dont bounce any more, so I do this for my own safety as much as that of the peleton.

 

 

 

Argus, especially when you start a bit later ..... Welcome to the World Champs of FUN rides .... chill bro ... stay safe first and foremost ... only gun it when 101% safe to do so ....