The Cape Epic Route has been updated on the Epic website. The descriptions of each stage have been filled out a bit more and the cut off times for each stage have also been added. Also, the legendary Dr Evil has added some annotations of his own and from the look of it he's offering some wise words which should be well heeded.
This particular profile is of the first day, which also happens to be the biggest day covering 110k's with 2770m of climbing. That big hill in the middle is Groenlandberg, and it is a BIG climb!
The whole route can be seen here.
This week has been one of my best on the bike for a while as I've done all my rides on my mountain bike. I really enjoy the road bike, but the mountain bike is really where the fun is!
This week was a load week on the Polar training programme and I was up for 15 hours of riding. I started with my usual 5 hour ride on Monday and rode from home to Jonkershoek, played on the single track (Canary path) and then rode home again. Tuesday was a 4 hour night-ride with Paul which was more or less the same as Monday except I didn't ride home (the lads twisted my arm to stay and have a beer). Today I rode with Paul and a few friends around Grabouw and up to Groenlandberg which is in the Hottentots Holland Nature Reserve . This was a great ride of 55k's and 1600m of climbing. The climb to the top of Groenlandberg was well worth it as we could see Simonstown on the Cape Peninsula and Hermanus along the East coast as well as a huge tract of farm land in-between. Much of what we rode this morning will be in the Epic this year and it's highly likely that Groenlandberg will also be in it. We plan to do plenty more riding in the area.
I'm actually 1hour and one minute short of my target this week but I'm not going to lose any sleep over that. The bottom line is I managed three quality rides, each with over 1000m of climbing.
Stats for (load) week:
Ride time: 13:59
Distance: 194km
Kcal's burnt: 10708
total ascent: 3735m
Important Notice: Road Conditions
All roads were reopened in the Overberg Area after last week’s heavy rains. Despite damage to the road surface in some areas, the event can go ahead as planned. A small detour in the Bonnievale area might be necessary. Team captains will be informed of any changes at registration.
So, according to the DC website, the event is definitely on with only a minor detour looking likely.
The bad news is that one of our team members has dropped out so we're down to 8 riders which leaves very little room for error on the day. Most teams are comprised of 12 riders (max) with the first 6 finishers making up the team's official time. Obviously the more team members the more likely it is that the team will finish with a decent time. Given our small team, we'll have to reconsider our target of 7 hours which is a real shame. Still, there's always next year.
The new and eagerly anticipated route for the 2009 Absa Cape Epic has been unveilled and it looks fantastic! Some are describing this as the first 'true' Epic MTB race and it certainly does look very exciting.
The key stats are:
Total Distance: 743km
Total Climbing: 16650m
So that's an average of 102k's per day (excluding prologue) and 2378m of climbing. That is going to be a tough ride!
I won't repeat the whole thing here but it's interesting to note that after the prologue in Cape Town, we'll be spending two nights at each camp, so two nights in Villiersdorp, Two in Greyton and two in Oak Valley before riding home to Lourensford (which is about 4k's from my house). As ever the Epic organisers are stating clearly that the route cannot be ridden outside of the event (which we respect), but there is quite a bit of the route that is officially open to the public so we'll spend as much time as we can on those bits.
All in all, this is looking very very exciting.
The official route for the 2009 Epic has yet to be announced and that is still a few weeks off. However on the Epic website they've got a description of the trial route that has just been ridden. The joy of the description for those of us who live locally is that the description tells us a lot about the new route. We already know a lot of the singletrack that is likely to be ridden and we can ride in the area legally with no problems. Now we look forward to getting the official route.
The route descriptions are here:
Stage 1
Stage 2
Stages 3 + 4
Stages 5, 6 + 7
