On doing a mountain bike race

I was planning to do the Sani2c. That is a really long bike ride. But hey, how hard can it be to ride a bike? Isn’t it downhill anyway? It’s from the Drakensberg to the coast right? Well, isn’t that generally downhill? So one hundred kilometres a day for three days is a long distance, I get that. Just pedal really slowly, eat well, relax, and maybe go on one or two training rides.

I told a cyclist buddy who looked at me incredulously. This was the expression of most people I broke the news to; there must be something about my current physical appearance that makes people believe that any endurance event would lie outside of my wheelhouse.

So my mate said, ‘Andrew, before you attempt that, let’s do a shorter ride, let’s do the Wartburg Classic. It’s only 45 kilometres. Much shorter. Let’s start there’. So I did. Here are my thoughts on that:

1.       The scenery is beautiful

I know this for I was instructed of this fact numerous times. I wasn’t looking out for the scenery choosing instead to bury my gaze one metre in front of my front tyre. There comes a time when natural landscape does nothing for you. Look at that Waterfall! See those trees! Isn’t it all so beautiful! Don’t tell me the landscape is beautiful, just tell me if that is another incline I see coming my way. All of God’s glorious creation you would trade, in this moment, for the Finish line. Actually - brutal honesty here - there were lives I would’ve trade for the finish line. By the way, I am a nature-loving pacifist. Yes, things got very, very bad very, very quickly.

2.       Inclines

Never celebrate a downhill. Every downhill has an evil twin sister that loathes you with all the loathing that hell could muster on one summer’s day in February. Also, when you start the race, a twenty degree incline is just that, twenty degrees. Thirty kilometres into that same race, a twenty degree incline becomes the equivalent of pedalling up a mine-shaft. Oh no, never celebrate; smile now and you weep later. Actually, don’t smile now and you will still weep later.

3.       Purple juice, green juice and bananas

You have these rest stops along the way that are there to feed you stuff for your journey. It is here, and only here that a combination of purple juice, extra- sweetened apple cider and over-ripe bananas looks appetizing. No combination of events anywhere else in this world would present this trifecta of gourmet delicacies as a treat, save for here. They were delicious and delicious only because it afforded me the opportunity of doing something other than cycling really, really slowly. Come Andrew, finish that fourth banana quickly, we need to get going! Do we have to? Can’t we stay here a little longer?! Maybe lie down a bit?

4.        She came in like a wrecking ball

You will get over-taken. They call this ‘snaking’. I only found that out just before the start of the race. ‘Watch out for the snakes!’ they cried. ‘If you are being snaked move out of the way!’ the announcer boomed. I got snaked by a twelve year old girl wearing pig-tails and chewing gum while quietly singing a Miley Cyrus song. Just deal with it.

5.       I thought this was about the legs!?

They have this thing in cycling called Technical. It’s a stupid term to describe sharp turns, loose sand and ludicrous drop-offs. All you really do is trade leg pain for arm pain as you apply different degrees of pressure to your breaking system. Eventually, foregoing any shame, I unclipped both feet and navigated the Technical bits with legs splayed out like Don Quixote on a particularly low riding donkey. I got snaked by most everybody even though it was single track. It helps to be veering off the track a lot of the time, this allows for others to pass without incident. Something else I learnt: Technical is the part of the bike race that takes forever to do and covers the magnificent distance of roughly one hundred metres. When you are running on empty seven kilometres into a forty five kilometre race that is very, very bad news indeed.  

6.       You may not finish

Or, in my case. You won’t finish. I got a lift back to the Start when I was twelve kilometres from the end. ‘Twelve kilometres doesn’t sound that far?’ you question. ‘Why quit so close to the end?’ you ask. When you have ‘hit the wall’, twelve kilometres is equal to the distance between Johannesburg and Cape Town, or Johannesburg and Cairo, or any foreign destination impossible to cycle to. The guy who gave me a lift was a friendly guy: does tyres for people in Wartburg he told me, Wartburg is a very quiet place he told me. He had the good grace to drop me off around the corner from the finish so that I could cycle in without facing the ignominy of being the only cyclist to lift my bike off the back of a bakkie. This is the bakkie of shame.

7.       Quitters never win!

Yeah, I know, but, well, how can I put this: I really really don’t care.

8.       The goodie bag.

You receive a goodie bag at the beginning of the race. This one contained syrup, the bag itself and a T-shirt. I chose an extra-large T-shirt that boasted of the fact that I finished the Wartburg Classic. I’ve built a bonfire. The symbolic burning is scheduled for tomorrow.

After that, I start training for the Sani2c.