Here follows a blog by John Loos about the Freedom Challenge Extreme Mountain Bike Race.
And so the excitement builds in the Freedom Challenge Extreme Mountain Bike Race, as we count down to the “End of the Start” of the 2014 event.
The Freedom Challenge start is a little different to other races in the sense that the start is staggered over almost a week and a half.
The main reason for this is logistical, so that the support stations (those traditional guest houses or farm houses that feed and accommodate the riders as they move down the course) can accommodate the numbers with their limited capacity.
The organisers attempt to batch the slower riders at the front of the field, with the faster starters starting later, which hopefully gives them time to start everyone off before moving to Cape Town in time to receive everyone at the finish.
There are no guarantees that this organisational strategy will work, because there aren’t exactly many potential seeding races for an event as extreme as the Freedom Challenge.
Nevertheless, it appears very possible that the race winner will come from the final batch of riders starting today at Pietermaritzburg Town Hall, that very spot from which the Comrades Marathon started two weeks ago.
The six riders in the final batch will be escorted through the neutral zone as far as Bisley on the outskirts of Maritzburg, and from there all hell will break loose – no official stages, no compulsory stops, sleep as much or as little as you wish, no fancy points systems, and no support vehicles or travelling Seattle coffee bars…
This is just one long non-stage race to Diemersfontein in Paarl via the official Race Across South Africa (RASA) route of around 2 300 km, with an estimated 47 000m cumulative ascent, the winner being the fastest one to get there.
Read the full blog here.
