OLI’s BLOG: Cape Epic … Will I Ever Go Back?

Photo by Gary Perkin/Cape Epic/SPORTZPICS

The ABSA Cape Epic isn’t called ‘The Epic’ for nothing! Despite it being the sixth trip into this particular pain-cave for both Charlie Boy and me, it is still truly an Epic event each and every time you race it its relentless brutality leads one to ask, and answer questions from deep within, and is without doubt what brings many grown men to tears when reaching the finish line.

Photo by Sam Clark/Cape Epic/SPORTZPICS

This outpouring of emotion highlights the sense of relief of having championed the Epic, which we all know is no easy feat – from sniper rocks that cut your tyres to shreds, to germs that lurk in the depths of porter loos, there is a fine line between success and failure at the world’s toughest marathon stage race. Every moment of every day has to be treated with the utmost respect. As seasoned campaigners will know, hand-shakes are outlawed, it’s fist pumps for the win.

One minute, with morale sky high, you can be pedalling along at a cracking pace justifying to yourself that the pain you’re putting yourself through is worth it … while the very next, you’re suddenly faced with a mechanical, a crash or as has happened to every Cape Epic rider at some point, you simply hit the wall. At any point in the race morale can tank, sinking faster than the Titanic.

Photo: David Rome

In the case of blowing to smithereens, the resultant mushroom cloud, usually the size of an atomic bomb, rises high into the sky above the rural Western Cape landscape. Your partner (if of course he or she isn’t an asshole and leaves you to fend for yourself) is the one left to pick up the pieces, carrying you home with perhaps a pocket to hold on to, or a push to get you up and over the last few metres of a gradient that feels like Everest but is in fact a false flat that your Grandma could manage with no trouble. At the end of the day, teamwork is undoubtedly the most critical element to any Epic success. It really is the cornerstone of what makes the Epic such an amazing race.

The other integral part of the Epic is the route. Sometimes (actually quite often) the route is, and was again this year, littered with unnecessarily long and particularly sh*t sections that tested our patience, and almost caused my dear cousin and partner Charlie Boy to loose his marbles. So much so that he in fact ripped off his baggies mid-stage, continuing in his ultra-rad Chambray cotton shirt and ‘designed-to-be-worn-underneath-your-baggies’ SWAT bib shorts – an almost unforgivable crime of fashion. His only saving grace was that it was pitch-black in the pain-cave … as none of our headlamps were powerful enough to reveal the depths of desperation that Charlie Boy had been pushed to.

One just has to ask anyone who rode this year’s race to describe the greater part of the route in and around Worcester and they will vividly describe the ‘joys’ of pushing downhill through beach sand, pedalling for hours on unpleasantly sandy, rocky farm roads and of course the many totally unnecessary doglegs that the Epic route designers love to include, for reasons still unknown.

While walking around the lawns of Meerendal last Sunday in a state of subdued euphoria (due to having been ripped a new one the whole week) I was asked if I was in for 2016? At that point in time, all I could muster was that, while having a blast in December in Kenton had been rad, if I am to rock n roll in 2016 with either The Weapon or Charlie Boy, we had better train a little bit harder! The Cape Epic ain’t for kids.

Despite the agonisingly mediocre sections of the route, with a week to digest the efforts undertaken by the Novus Pinners (that’s Charlie Boy and me) I am now slowly starting to get the feeling that I may just be able to muster up the morale to suit up in the finest Lycra and line up in 2016 for a 7th crack at this monument of self-induced suffering.

I shudder to think how on earth this is even possible?!! Each and every year the Epic unapologetically rips us a new one, leaving us to arrive at the finish line kicking and screaming, bleating that we’ll never return. Only to go home, rest the legs for a week or two and then sign up to do it all again the following year.

Photo: David Rome

This my friends is a phenomenon so outrageously extreme that it would take Stephen Hawking or some other next level genius eons to understand. It may actually turn out to be one of the greatest unsolved mysteries of all time. Perhaps after 17 Duvels the answer may present itself. However, I fear that before any of us are able to neck our 17th Duvel we most certainly will have passed out. I guess then, that the answer is destined to stay a mystery forever.

Photo by Gary Perkin/Cape Epic/SPORTZPICS

What I do know though, is that if history is anything to go by, I will most likely find myself rolling the dice with 1199 other lycra bandits ready to do battle with whatever the Cape Epic throws at us.

Ciao ciao

Oli

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