This past weekend was a true baptism of fire with my preparation for the Nedbank Desert Dash in Namibia in early December. I have done a few 100 km rides and can feel significant improvement in my level of fitness and conditioning. I am also intensely aware of the role that the magnificent Trek SL-7 that I am privileged to be riding is playing. This weekend was a reality check of how deep I am going to have to dig to ‘lash the Dash’.
Lindani is a magnificent game farm near Melkrivier in the Waterberg. Nico Sterk takes his athletes there to get answers to questions that they do not even know they are subconsciously asking. ‘The Lindani loop’, as we have come to call it, is 103 k’s of challenging dirt roads which throw gnarly washed-out descents, sand, retina-detaching corrugations and 2,600 odd metres of climbing at you. There is simply no place to hide. As if that isn’t enough, we started the ride at midday, with the temperature in the mid-thirties. (Yes, Buttercup, that’s centigrade, hotter than satan’s cats’ bollocks!)
Let me digress for a moment. In order to psyche myself up for this Dash endeavour, I came across a book called ‘This Road I Ride’ by Juliana Buhring. This woman grew up in terrible circumstances as a child born into a cult which essentially took her from her parents at 4 years old so as not to “distract them from their calling”. She was sent to International schools, which in essence were indoctrination centres, in over 30 countries, as diverse as Greece, Thailand and India. She eventually ran away from the cult when she was around eighteen and tried to find her way in the world.
In Kampala, Uganda, she met the love of her life. A South African adventurer called Hendri Coetzee. I read his book ‘Living the Best Day Ever’, which had a profound impact on me. Hendri died while leading a kayak expedition on a remote river in the Congo. Paddling with two American Olympic paddlers, Hendri was taken from his kayak by a huge Nile crocodile. The book he was writing was close to completion and was finished by a family member. I wrote to Hendri’s mom, Marie, sharing the massive impact that his book had had on me. She asked if I would say a few words at the launch of Hendri’s book at Skoobs, a bookshop in Montecasino, Jo’burg, which I was privileged to do.
Juliana was devastated by Hendri’s death literally days before she was due to join him for New Year. She felt that the essence had been sucked from her life and questioned how she could go on. A friend suggested that she cycle across Canada, believing that having a goal would help Juliana find some new meaning in life. “Why don’t I just ride around the world?” Was her retort. The seed for an epic adventure was planted. Doing some research, she found that the Guinness Book of Records had no record for a female cyclist circumnavigating the globe.
A minor issue that faced Juliana was that she had never ridden a bicycle. A mere eight months later, she left Naples in Italy, and riding into prevailing headwinds caused by the Earth’s rotation, she rode around the world (29,000 km) in 152 days. Her ride was unsupported, meaning that she was on her own for the duration, riding over 200 km a day through everything that a journey as diverse as Europe, America, India and Turkey, to name a few, could throw at her. Reading her account of the trip, I totally understood why she and Hendri were soulmates. They are hewn from the same rock.
Needless to say, her book has been a huge inspiration to me. If a slip of a girl can do what she did in the worst possible circumstances, then I can, with appropriate conditioning, spend one day in purgatory. Embarking on our ride at midday, the oppressive heat was immediately apparent. 15 km into the ride, Liqui Moly came to the rescue. I felt a bounciness from the back of the bike. Puncture! I was carrying plugs and bombs for such an occurrence, but I was just getting a rhythm going. Then I remembered that I was carrying a Liqui Moly Bike Tyre Fix specifically for bicycles. We whipped it out and shook it, screwed it onto the valve and hit the button. The foam sealant pumped the tyre and sealed the leak. 20 km along, at our first water point, I pumped the tyre to the correct pressure and had no worries for the rest of the ride.
No tyre worries, that is. The long climbs did not let up, and allied to the heat, the going was brutal. The unseasonal rain wreaked havoc with the route. Climbs and descents were gnarly with washouts and exposed rock lurkers, so even going downhill required your total attention, giving no opportunity to chill. My son Dave, accompanying me on the ride, could see that I was digging deep, and asked if he could give me a bit of a shove up a particularly long climb. I declined the help, feeling that grinding it out would pay dividends both mentally and physically in time to come. Damn these Ironman triathletes!
And so, we soldiered on. We approached the last waterpoint as the sun was setting spectacularly to our left. Seeing Paul Cordes and his wife Yolande, previous winners of the mixed category of the Cape Epic, lifted my mood instantly, as did the ice-cold Coke which they offered me. Telling Paul that my neck was taking huge strain over the rough route, he suggested that he adjust the headstock on my Trek to raise the bars. Protesting weakly that I didn’t want to hassle him fell on deaf ears, as Paul, assisted by Yolande, had the bike ready to go well before I was.
Riding at night is a whole new experience. I wear spectacles, so I am already a bit unsighted without my glasses. Factor in a headlight that proved to be woefully inadequate, and descents become a challenge. By this stage of the ride, your hands are weak from clenching the bars so tight over the bumps, dips and corrugations, not to mention the patches of deep sand that have you wobbling like a drunken sailor on shore leave, clinging on as you try to pedal through to firm ground.
I stopped to replace the batteries in my headlight and eat half a nougat bar for a last little energy boost for the final hurdle of the day, a brutal 1,3 km climb 3 km from the finish. It is one of those climbs that keep on coming, and then as if that isn’t enough, it kicks brutally at the end. Thanks to Sally Williams, I made it over the crest, and then we meandered into the finish.
Listening to the war stories from the other athletes, I realised that I was not the only cyclist questioning my sanity at willingly signing up for this pain. There is a saying amongst karateka that blood is thicker than water, but sweat is thicker than blood. This is true for endurance athletes too. It moulds you into a band of brothers and sisters like little else can. It also sucks you into a world that many will not grasp. I will let Hendri Coetzee have the last word. He commented after returning from a savage solo expedition, “There are few times in my life I feel as lost and as lonely as when I return from a long mission. When you realise that no matter what you have been through, that no matter how much you might have sacrificed or learned, the world does not care. The world functions perfectly fine superficially.
He continues, “You feel the sadness creeping in when you hear people complaining about a bad day, and you know that in a month or two their simple worries will be yours again. In the weeks or months that it takes to readjust, you are left to wonder how what seemed so significant on your journey can now seem so everyday. As you start to age, it is easy to just take the easy route through life, but as I rode along next to Dave and contemplated the many adventures that we have shared, I breathed a silent prayer of thanks. Yesterday is ancient history and tomorrow may never come, but by living in the moment, we truly live the best day ever!”
The TREK SL-7. What a piece of gravel bike perfection! It handled everything the challenging route could throw at it and simply grinned, as if it was saying, “Is that your best shot?” It was uncannily stable on the gnarliest descents, steering with accuracy and precision through the obstacles and lurkers. It responded to my feeble attempts at pedalling through deep sand washes and carried me back to hardpack. The relaxed geometry, whilst enhancing comfort and stability, gives away nothing in accuracy. IT IS A MASTERPIECE!
For more information on Trek’s Gravel bike range, visit: www.trekbikes.com
