[Event] 99er Cycle Tour

[NicholasH]

3 hours ago, Roadie_ said:

Hi Nicholas. Great event as always, from all involved - from registration to prize giving. Volunteers were cheerful at all points from start to finish. The only improvement suggestion I would have, is the post ride food trucks (3 is not enough) - options were Indian curry, Deep fried wings and Burgers. The Wings an Curry trucks hardly had a queue, but the Burger queue was long and slow. Frustrating for many people and I eventually walked away. In comparison, the Winelands event 2 weeks ago had more food trucks - and this event had much fewer entrants. Perhaps you could get even just 1 more next year - burgers and boerrie rolls seems to be the crowd favourite usually. Thanks again for a well organized and run event, and your constant feedback to questions and comments from the okes on this forum.

Your input is appreciated, esp the burgers and boerrie rolls comment. Those are wuite easy to churn out my the dozen. On the other hand, you won't believe it : we actually BATTLED to get vendors to come out to our event. I would have thought people would clamour to have access to 4000 hungry cyclists in a captive environment....

What was really difficult : we tried to cater for our Muslim riders but COULD NOT FIND any Halal vendors willing to come out to us. Apparently there are like only 3 in the Western Cape and they were busy (I do speak under correction!) 

As I have said in previous posts on different topics : some things are just out of our control....

Glad you enjoyed it tho! See you next year

[NicholasH]

3 hours ago, MSA said:

@NicholasH many congrats to you and your team for yet another fantastic event. May it continue for many more years 🙏

 

Starting in the later groups i didnt expect to ride any PB times. The ride was going along nicely, until got caught up in the P group as they past and we latched on. Those youngsters in the GrannyGear kit as well guys in the Navyish kits did solid effort to pull upfront catching quite few bunches. Eventually i was dropped but still finished in a respectable time.

 

All in all a great day out.

 

 

Thanks! Always appreciate feedback. My focus is on the Trilogy for the last 3 years since its inception. So, while I do have visibility of the 95k (I have to do the race briefing with CSA, Province Cycling, all the team managers, traffic, etc at 5:15am) I don't know the nitty gritty of various groups etc. I do get feedback from the commissaries after the event so I hear about some of the crashes and rogue riders. I do take recommendations from ALL the distances tho and try and improve where we can.

 

[Musashi]

I'm glad my son and I dropped back to a 06:30 start.  The main hurdle with a tandem is you end up doing extreme interval training.  It's quite efficient on the flats and downhill, but every climb requires max effort just to keep up.  We did loose the groups a few times but still ended up 14 minutes faster than last year.  Maybe next year we'll break 3 hours.

What was interesting, a few riders in bunch F, G and H did not know how to hold a line but I stayed clear behind them as they drift left and right.  We didn't have any incidents.  And it was only now and again that someone crossed the lane to overtake and generally the riders kept on this side of the road.  I think most riders in these bunches are a bit less serious about their time and more serious about their safety.

What really surprised me was how patient many drivers were.  For some long stretches they had to sit behind the bunch and wait until it's safe to overtake, and no one seems overly irritated.  Maybe it was a different story inside the vehicle.  A big thanks to them.

If I HAD to critique, the only minor thing to improve would be the generators close to the food stalls.  The noise made it nearly impossible to hear the announcements and vibe.  I almost missed it when they called our number for the lucky draw.

I don't know how you pulled it off, but you even managed to organize perfect weather!

Well done, excellent event!

[CTLonewolf]

5 hours ago, Jacques9874 said:

Hahah, I may or may not have been the instigator of the high pace in E bunch. I was on a serious mission!
Spoke to a buddy of mine at the finish who'd started in D and he mentioned they were riding frustratingly slowly so they had no right to complain when we caught them. Have to agree with you though, they were not happy and made that merge unnecessarily dangerous.

Yeah, you and Shaun(dropped from C bunch) were pulling like crazy.

I see the seeding has been updated on PPA website, are you happy?

[Kerritz]

My first Trilogy and I will definitely be back again. 

After a tough Stanford in December I thought it would be a good idea to ride the Trilogy route at least once before race day. I enjoyed it so much that I ended up riding it three times before race day during January so I knew exactly what was waiting for us. I also made up my mind after attempt number one about which bike to use and felt sorry for some of the guys on their gravel bikes in that mealie field. 🤕

The huge black cows must have timeshare before that a-frame, I saw them there every time I trained on that route. 

Was it just me or was there a 47km to go board by the farm with the green lawn before the 2nd waterpoint? That was on exactly 40km so must have been a mistake or a prank. 😁

Either way I had a good chuckle and just carried on. 

Thanks for a fun and well organized event. 👊🏻

[Charles71]

5 hours ago, Jacques9874 said:

Hahah, I may or may not have been the instigator of the high pace in E bunch. I was on a serious mission!
Spoke to a buddy of mine at the finish who'd started in D and he mentioned they were riding frustratingly slowly so they had no right to complain when we caught them. Have to agree with you though, they were not happy and made that merge unnecessarily dangerous.

Hey I also pulled - for like 2mins 🤪 right after we pulled out of the Suburbs. There was a lot of firepower in group E and couldn't rotate to take another pull, thanks for the tow.

[WattsTheFuss]

1 hour ago, Charles71 said:

Hey I also pulled - for like 2mins 🤪 right after we pulled out of the Suburbs. There was a lot of firepower in group E and couldn't rotate to take another pull, thanks for the tow.

Interesting to know that group E had so much firepower, yet group P finished in the same time. They must have had some super powers 😃

[NicholasH]

4 hours ago, Musashi said:

I'm glad my son and I dropped back to a 06:30 start.  The main hurdle with a tandem is you end up doing extreme interval training.  It's quite efficient on the flats and downhill, but every climb requires max effort just to keep up.  We did loose the groups a few times but still ended up 14 minutes faster than last year.  Maybe next year we'll break 3 hours.

What was interesting, a few riders in bunch F, G and H did not know how to hold a line but I stayed clear behind them as they drift left and right.  We didn't have any incidents.  And it was only now and again that someone crossed the lane to overtake and generally the riders kept on this side of the road.  I think most riders in these bunches are a bit less serious about their time and more serious about their safety.

What really surprised me was how patient many drivers were.  For some long stretches they had to sit behind the bunch and wait until it's safe to overtake, and no one seems overly irritated.  Maybe it was a different story inside the vehicle.  A big thanks to them.

If I HAD to critique, the only minor thing to improve would be the generators close to the food stalls.  The noise made it nearly impossible to hear the announcements and vibe.  I almost missed it when they called our number for the lucky draw.

I don't know how you pulled it off, but you even managed to organize perfect weather!

Well done, excellent event!

Glad you had a good day out 😁

We can ask the food guys for next year but I can imagine that they only have a certain length of cable they can use. And we can't move them further away.

If that is your biggest gripe, I am happy 😅

[NicholasH]

2 hours ago, Kerritz said:

My first Trilogy and I will definitely be back again. 

After a tough Stanford in December I thought it would be a good idea to ride the Trilogy route at least once before race day. I enjoyed it so much that I ended up riding it three times before race day during January so I knew exactly what was waiting for us. I also made up my mind after attempt number one about which bike to use and felt sorry for some of the guys on their gravel bikes in that mealie field. 🤕

The huge black cows must have timeshare before that a-frame, I saw them there every time I trained on that route. 

Was it just me or was there a 47km to go board by the farm with the green lawn before the 2nd waterpoint? That was on exactly 40km so must have been a mistake or a prank. 😁

Either way I had a good chuckle and just carried on. 

Thanks for a fun and well organized event. 👊🏻

😆 I also saw that 47km sign when I drove behind a bunch. I later realized the problem: we recycle sign boards each year and on the OTHER side of that sign was "Slow down - Cyclists" 🤦 The 47km was totally random and by chance ended up there. 

I'll make sure they place it elsewhere next year to give the roadies a fright....

[Sticky Bottle]

15 hours ago, Patchelicious said:

Having to pick between MTBs or Gravel bikes, is part of the fun. 
They both have advatages and disadvantages on this route. Gravel gains an advantage on the tar and some gravel roads, MTB gain it back on the single track and corrugations. Gravel bikes lose a lot on those short technical or bumpy bits.

What was more annoying was the number of E-Bikes, they have little to no downside.

As fast as the gravel bikes on the road and as fast as the MTB on the more technical stuff.
 

Perhaps have the E-Bikes in a separate category and start batch?

Absolutely loved the Trilogy. 
 

For me personally the Gravel Bike was the perfect weapon of choice and will be back on it again next year.

Must agree on the E-Bikes. Was a little annoying having them come past to the front of the race and then placing well overall. 
 

 

[Charles71]

9 hours ago, WattsTheFuss said:

Interesting to know that group E had so much firepower, yet group P finished in the same time. They must have had some super powers 😃

It's all relative. Put it another way, group E had 43 people that finished in 2:30:16 or faster (best time was 02:28:23) - I was not one of them as I finished in 02:32:02(60th position in E). Looking at group P, they only had four people that finished faster than me with the fastest time coming in at 2:30:25, so I wouldn't say that both groups finished "in the same time", but it was still a good show that they put on so hats off to them.

[MSA]

Defintely good showing and glad to see multiple groups putting in the efforts and work.

 

On the upside atleast us slower guys were able to go tad bit quicker 😁 

[Pure Savage]

On 2/9/2026 at 10:12 AM, DieselnDust said:

I completely understand your reservations and it is valid. 
race organisers have a massive problem to get full road closure.

1) cost 

2) approval 

the cost issue is a big one for the 99er organiser because it’s a school that owns and runs the event. They mitigate the risk somewhat through the very early start and the route being out into the countryside. 
I started in A and we didn’t have a big problem with riders staying in the lane probably due to losing about 20 riders in the first crash at 1,5km. So bunch size does help. 
but when we caught % they didn’t allow us smooth passage through and forced us in to the oncoming lane. Fortunately this was on Adderly Road which was closed but B was chasing us down and they started only 2 or 3 min behind us. They don’t make it across but took a minute out of us. If they had caught us then we’d have had a problem keeping everyone in the left hand lane. 
This problem occurs in many road races. Often riders with lower indexes drop back to ride in slower groups to help their buddies improve their seeding so that come DC, they can smack talk for KOTAS. So slower groups end up catching the faster groups and chaos ensues.

personally I’d like to see this practice stamped out because it creates a lot of problems come The Fun Ride World Champs with okes and gals being seeded in groups they can just about hang onto. The psychology of this is quite interesting and there’s probably a few PhD studies in getting to an understanding of what drives people to cheat in this manner to achieve a good FRWC seeding while not actually being fast enough to be there. Many of these riders do t seem to have more than a few years of cycling under the belt. Last year in 1A there were plenty of 2 xFRWC finishers in the bunch! How!?! Back in the 80’s and 90’s your seeding was updated once a year , in August , before the new fun ride season began. They took your Argust time and you were grouped and there you stayed until you improved your Next Argust time. The. They introduced the index system and you were allowed one re-seed during the season other than your Argust finish timing time driven seeding. 
today, you are reseeded after every race. Pick tour race appropriately and you can jump from Z to B within a couple of races if you have a buddy or 2 helping you. Fast but they haven’t learned the ropes and bunch riding skills. Still totally dominated by time pressure with no big picture thinking and certainly lacking a safety mindset.

e.g. during the 99er I loved my spot in the bunch and who I wanted around me based on their similar riding style and fitness that I could determine from pedalling and overall smootheness. The jerky chaps I steered clear of. Except there was this one box who continually insisted on pushing up on my left hand side despite me sitting on the yellow line. At one point, somewhere around 66km he does this again but this time there’s no shoulder and his mate decides to push me on my right to slow me down and tjunes me to give his buddy space to Join the line. 
Well someone can just FRO and he’s lucky I didn’t nudge him Into the ditch for endangering not just Myself but the rest of the bunch behind me. I left him out there in the dirt but it’s this kind of unacceptable behaviour that is endemic in the present road race community. They have t paid their dues and the system has made it easy for them to climb the ladder too fast without learning the ropes. And hence road racing is crazy dangerous today. 
 

now on approvals, sure they could get full road closure approval but probably only for a limited time like maybe 9am. This will help but it will cost the organisers a lot more money and that means raising the entry fee which may reduce the numbers. Remember a lot of the event structure is build in experience of what worked , what can work in future and how much it will cost. I’m sure every event organisers first prize from the CoCT is full road closure but it’s just not possible to shut down large parts of the city every weekend for bicycle races when we already have a massive congestion problem.

what is achievable is maybe more time between the groups departure and definitely stamping out behaviour of A index riders dropping back to help their D and E indexed buddies. The “how” is a problem but as we have seen, wee have a morally corrupt society where on the one hand we scream at drunk drivers killing cyclists but leave a bicycle race after 3 beers and definitely over the limit. The only way to fix this is to reduce the number of times seeding runs are conducted 

I think its more of an issue that there are just less funrides for people to get used to bunch riding and alot of people train solo or small groups. A lot of people that join Tuesday morning rides get a shock as need to pick up on the group riding skills, many really strong on climbs from Zwift etc, but are forever touching brakes etc, but after 5 weeks they are a lot less twitchy. 

Think going a little deep here, cheating would imply that you have to start in your seeding group, and if you drop back that would be cheating, but thats not the case. If you reseeded once a year, didnt allow people to drop,  you would kill road cycling spending cash on events to just ride on the front every week, win your batch, learn no bunch riding skills because you are sitting on the front and not within the bunch. 

[ChrisF]

3 hours ago, Charles71 said:

It's all relative. Put it another way, group E had 43 people that finished in 2:30:16 or faster (best time was 02:28:23) - I was not one of them as I finished in 02:32:02(60th position in E). Looking at group P, they only had four people that finished faster than me with the fastest time coming in at 2:30:25, so I wouldn't say that both groups finished "in the same time", but it was still a good show that they put on so hats off to them.

 

Group N split at the railway bridge at Phisantekraal.

 

On the climb up to the airstrip those four "P" riders came past .... they were MOVING !!  It is always impressive to see these riders in action.  At the time I was using the e-bike and rocking it up that hill to get ahead of a group of riders .... and the "ease" with which these four came past .... RESPECT !!

 

They caught the front N riders shortly, and if I understood @RossTopher correct, they then worked together and had a pretty fast race.

[Kom]

interesting stats on the times from each wave - Group B in 2nd place according the the median finish time.

[Skubarra]

35 minutes ago, Kom said:

interesting stats on the times from each wave - Group B in 2nd place according the the median finish time.

this looks a little suspicious 🙃