My legs are sore, uncomfortably sore in fact. It’s not the sharp pain of recent injury but rather the deep throb of unfitness. Earlier this evening I bent to pick up a dropped set of keys. About halfway down my hammies went into mild spasm and I was drawn to the painful realization that there was no going back, well at least not the way I had come. I crab shuffled across my room ‘downward-dog‘ style and used the leg of my desk to leverage myself vertically inch-by-inch. Apparently this is the price of the ‘off season.’ My off season has evolved into the time period between adventures, the last one of which was way back in November which I guess makes kick-starting the pins that much more interesting.
Thankfully though, blowing out the muscular cobwebs is not all sore muscles and slow rides. It’s strange how regularly I forget that there is nothing that makes me smile as often and as genuinely as being back on the bike, be it that I’ve had to adjust to my training schedule to include the notoriously poor hours of a candidate attorney. Gone are the inter-lecture mid-morning rides, replaced instead by a high percentage of late night and extraordinarily early morning rides. Fortunately the roads are quiet and though I hate to brag, for a sizable city Cape Town has an impressive array of visible stars to lose one’s thoughts amongst.
So, why the need for late nights and stiff legs? The answer lies in the title; because we (the super ballie and I) just could not let sleeping dogs lie. With the Freedom Challenge and Tour Divide complaint boxes ticked one might have thought that we would be content to return to the shorter more intense format of racing. That, however, would be like asking a heroine addict to quit and start smoking cigarettes. I’ve spoken at length previously about the addictive nature of cycling, and specifically, of challenging oneself to go further and at greater speed. The time for denial is long past, I’ve drifted through anger, bargaining, guilt, depression, and have come to accept that I am addicted to ultra endurance racing.
This year we’re choosing to sate our addiction by entering the The Transcontinental Race. In my opinion the format and organisation of the Transcontinental is such that it will soon surpass The Tour Divide as the benchmark for self supported ultra-endurance racing. In only its third edition the 220 (180 single and 25 or so pairs) entries were sold out in days, although if my information is correct, we will be the first Africans to compete.
This 4300km journey will take us from a mid-night start on the Muur Van Geraardsbergen (oh ye of Tour of Flanders infamy) in Belgium, zig-zagging across Europe to the very borders of Asia on the Bosphorus Strait, Istanbul. The race differs from our previous experience in that it will be completed on road bikes – although not all on tar roads – and the route will be planned entirely by ourselves. The rules are simple; no support, no riding on roads that would normally be illegal to cycle on, no thumbing lifts, taking trains or ferries, and you have 16 days to reach the finish (working out to around 300km a day) ticking off four checkpoints en route to the finish, namely; Mount Ventoux in France, the Strada Del Assietta in Italy, Vukovar in Croatia, and Mount Lovcen in Montenegro.
Follow me as I update both interested and uninterested parties on my progress and the art of bike-packing as we gear up for a winter of training, racing, and general admin preparation ahead of our biggest adventure yet.
Next time I talk bikes and how to choose the perfect bike-packing steed.
Bruce
We discovered that our racks had slid down the frame, now resting on the derailler and the rack deck was scraping the tyres. The culprit was the protective tape between frame and rack, which was supposed to prevent the frame from getting scratched. Due to the dislodged tape, the rack’s grip wasn´t firm anymore. The rain had probably done the rest. This definitely needed some adjustment!
The new-ish Lower Bloemendal trail in Durbanville was the destination of choice. I’d heard loads about it from the night rides there every Thursday so thought I’d give it a bash. There’s also a mini 400m trail for kids (aptly named ‘The Incubator’) which my lightie was hankering to tear up. I waved goodbye to the troops and pointed my wheel in the direction of the trail’s green start arrow. Just me, my MTB and the wind through the vents in my helmet.
At one point, I stopped to watch a father and son tackling the trail behind me. What an eye-opener. The kid was going balls-to-the-walls , flying over the jumps, and tearing around the berms. Sure, he face-planted a few times but the thing is, he had absolutely no fear. At every fall, he would pick himself up, dust himself off and set off again. I realised I could learn a lot from this kid – who was probably around nine.
Whenever we told anybody before our trip we would ride through China, people were really shocked. “What, two girls by yourself? Isn’t that dangerous?” “China, oh no!” So it went on. Needless to say, we were a little nervous and intimidated about number one, getting into this country, and number two, cycling through it.
The first week of our journey we spent in Hong Kong where we assembled our bikes and visited four schools, educating the kids on what is happening in South Africa to our rhinos and informing them about the Rhino Art project which they can take part in. The children’s responses were amazing; they were so enthusiastic and inquisitive about our trip, loved seeing our bikes and some finished their rhino art paintings by the very next day.
There was no resting on the seventh day, and there was no resting on the eighth day. Even on the ninth day you only get to rest after completing the final 84km at the Old Mutual joBerg2c.
