94.7 50Km Corruption

[Beebster]

I don't know about all the people who rode the 50km on Saturday, but the congestion was horrific!!!  I mean really now, could the organisers not have known this up front, and changed the route a little.  We must have waited around 30min all together and this caused us to miss the cut off we weren't  aware of.  Then there were 3 Marshalls with 3 different opinions as to where we should cycle to next.   My 50km turned out to be a very short 30km...

 

What a disappointment, next year I'm trading my offroad for a roadie, sad to say...

 

Come on people, get with the program...!!!!

 

 

 

[vinylguy]

if said the cut off info on the fact sheet with your race number.... but ja they should have extended the cutoff due to all the waiting... but luckly i managed to finish in time... i think way in time...

[Addicted to trail]

Agreed! it was completely chaos, up until the point where we split from the 25kmers, i really enjoyed the last 30 odd kms! some nice climbing, and interesting prisons.

 

i must say i was more disappointed with the lack of after race entertainment (everything seemed to be reserved for the roadies on the sunday)

 

really did expect more from such a huge event.

 

[knievel]

The MTB race has had major congestion issue for the past 3 years, last year i swore i wouldn't do it again be cause of that.

[peterjohn]

It was my first 94.7 MTB race and I loved it. I only started riding 5 months ago, have completed 12 races and they ALL had some form of congestion.

 

 

 

Is this not just a fact of life when so many people ride one route with some single track and hectic water crossings?

[Beebster]

A fact of life is that you should learn from past mistakes.  As I can gather, some people enjoyed it tremendously, and some just hated the congestion, like me.  Standing still for 10 - 15min is really not enjoyable, seriously.  I also had a couple of races in this year, and non was this bad.....

[Eldron]

Sometimes you just gotta pay your dues - last year I started in A5 and rode/ran/swam and fought my way past about a million people....this year I started in A1.

Likewise in road racing - I only did mountain bike races and duathlon for a few years so I had no road seeding at all - it took me 4 or 5 road races doing 100km solo time trials before I got near the front.

 

The seeding system might be a bit flawed but in my view it's right about 90% of the time...

 

The answer is simple - if you want to start where there is no congestion train a little more and get a better seeding - it's all part of riding - not everyone can start in the front on their first race and 4,000 people are never going to fit onto jeep track/single track no matter how well you seed them.

 

 

[Slowbee]

from the sounds of things Bob is right. They should just cancel everything.

 

 

[Wyatt Earp]

What congestion ?

[Beebster]

Good point Eldron .  What you are saying makes a lot of sense, but how could one seed if you can't make up your time in these races because of all the congestion.  I know it can't all be good, but at least just a little better you know.  Anyway, next time I probably will enter again, and by then, I hope that I will be closer to A1 than this year, eish ....

[Gasping]

Duuno what the problem is. We are told that MTB'ers are a friendly sort. You guys did not even have to wave, you could just chat to the person next to you.

 

[Sharkie 2]

Ok so Bury said yesterday their was 4000 riders doing the different MTB races, don't know how true this is but that amount is waaayyyyy to much. MTB races are normally 2500max depending on the route, they in it for the money!

[-Gazza-]

Thought the race was great! Had heard about the queues from years past and didn't want to enter! Boy I'm glad i did.

[Clare Costello]

Guys

 

It's not that there was congestions - its to be expected - its the fact that they didn't take it into concideration for the half cut off time.

 

This was my first 94.7. Trained really hard, didn't push my way forward as it would be inconciderate to everyone that was also just waiting their turn. Would've been nice to complete it.

[tabasco]

there is nothing wrong with the race or the organisation, the bottom line is that the route is just not able to handle 4000 riders in a day over such a short distance. They should seriously reconsider the route or cap the entries.

[Beebster]

I completely agree with Clare about the "would have been nice to complete it", after all, I paid for 50Km worth of riding, all they could have done was extend the cut off with an approximation of what the time was we waited in the bottle necks, all I needed was about 10 minutes anyway...