Ma Feature
Braver believed
than I
We runners sometimes think that our running fitness will see us through any physical challenge, but sometimes we learn the hard way that skill and experience on top of fitness are an even better idea … as I found out during the recent Nedbank Tour de Tuli mountain biking event. – BY KIM STEPHENS airfield in Botswana, was fairly uneventful, and I patted my new best friend as I hung her on the bike rack and told her that we’ d do just fine, but when I met the leaders and sweeps allocated to our team, I’ m pretty sure they rolled their eyes as I said,“ I’ m strong … my running endurance will get me through.”
n 2012, one of the clients on my books was an outdoor apparel brand that happened to be the
Isponsor of the African Otter Trail Run, and thus I was offered an entry to the‘ Grail of Trail.’ The Otter is South Africa’ s premier marathon distance trail race, and it is relentlessly tough. I hadn’ t even run a marathon on road, but I found myself enthusiastically accepting the entry, and promptly purchased a clunky pair of trail shoes and badly-fitted hydration pack.
I ran a few long trails, none of which were appropriate to Otter training, and completed my first road marathon, on a flat as a pancake course. Then I lined up for a giant reality check. I completed the Otter well within cut-off, but was totally out of my depth the entire way. I fell, I cried a little, and even briefly considered flinging myself into the ocean … but it changed me. I realised I was, as that tubby yellow bear likes to say, braver than I believed.
IRRESISTIBLE INVITATION
A few months ago my client, Coleman, offered me the opportunity to join its team for the 2017 Nedbank Tour de Tuli in late July. I’ d worked as crew on the event in 2013, and knew this isn’ t just a mountain biking tour through three different countries, it is also the main fundraising event for Tour de Wilderness, an environmental and life skills programme for rural children living in and around conservation areas. Since that first Otter, I’ m annoyingly prone to“ seize the moment” choices, and I felt that my endurance base would see me through the 250km of riding. It is a tour, after all, not a race – but it is very much a tour on a bike, and I am very much a runner … owner of things like cycling bibs( the very thing I had mocked on my husband numerous times). Upon recommendation, I added a large tube of chamois cream to my kit. At the very least, I was not going into this battle at risk of damaging my nether regions.
Before I knew it I was in a car with my team mates, heading to the South Africa-Botswana border, where my beautiful new Cannondale Scalpel loan bike was waiting for me. A truck took my duffle bag, and I casually requested assistance in attaching the pedals borrowed from my son to this unfamiliar piece of equipment. The 3km ride to the first camp, on an
RUDE AWAKENING
The first day was a 65km ride from the Limpopo Valley Airfield to the Amphitheatre Bushcamp. I applied that chamois cream with wild abandon, and put on a cycling bib with slightly less enthusiasm. I added a pair of borrowed cleats. I looked the part! After a picture-perfect sunrise and great coffee, we were off, each team leaving with 10-minute intervals, and we were team 19, last to leave. The first 15km felt like a shedding of life and work stress. Phones were off, noise was limited to birdlife and the whirrrrr of tubeless tyres on dusty tracks, and we found a rhythm as I bonded with my bike. This sense of freedom was short lived, however. Soon I realised I was probably going to die, face-down in a dry river bed, with a bike attached to my body.
That soft sand made my tyres take on their own personalities, like teenagers with middle fingers in the air! What had I got myself into? My brain was saying“ No!” very loudly while I ate sand, and I was using every profanity I’ d ever learned. Then we hit rocks, and I swear my pedals smashed into every single one! I wobbled and fell, smashing my right knee on the handlebars. I got off and walked as I swallowed tears. I got told to harden up by sweep Matt, and I wallowed in self-pity. I was holding my team back and felt like a giant fraud. Basically, I was deeply afraid. I quite like my teeth where they are; likewise my kneecaps, and 40km in, after I had shocked my wonderful team mates with a complete 180-degree personality shift, I finally climbed into a Landrover at one of the checkpoints. Gutted, I was just not up for it, and I needed to stop. It was that, or call the lions to eat me. And lions don’ t come when called; I did try.
Anyway, I purchased a beautiful little second-hand bike, but it became a crime statistic after just four rides, and I was not in a position to replace it. My training was therefore limited to a couple of spins on a gym bike and plenty of mountain running. And that is how I found myself in the Ciovita showroom in Cape Town, agreeing to become the proud new
HAVING ANOTHER GO
After plenty of sundowners that went on long past sunset, I crashed into my tent with my kit vaguely prepared for the next day. The exceptional Amphitheatre Bushcamp would be home for two nights, with open air showers, a feast of food and the sound of wildlife all around. It would have been
Images: Courtesy Kim Stephens
40 ISSUE 98 SEPTEMBER 2017 / www. modernathlete. co. za