I couldn’t see Matt, but looking at the bicycle-shape hole in the sugar
cane, I had a pretty good idea where he was. As usual, Matthew
de Jongh, my
race partner and good mate had shot down the hill ahead of me. And I was fine
with this. Thanks to his superior bike skills and a total disregard for
personal preservation, Matt was easily the quicker of team Subaru CAR’s two
riders when it came to descents.
By now we were deep into stage three of the sani2c Race and, by his own
admission, Matt had gotten a little cocky. Me too, to be honest. You can’t
really blame us. Two-and- a-half days earlier we’d lined up
with our fellow
batch H riders at the Underberg Primary School ground. And, frankly, we were
kakking ourselves. What lay before was the unknown... the unchartered... virgin
territory... I swear you could hear a lone bugler in the background. As far as
we knew, no-one had attempted this iconic South African stage race on a
cyclocross bike before and we weren’t sure if our equipment or bodies would be
up to it.
 |
| Day 2: dusty but smooth trails. Ideal for the CX bikes |
For the preceding couple of months both of us had been riding our steel-
framed Cotic >X< cyclocrossers on the mountain trails of Cape Town (me)
and Pretoria (Matt). We’d gradually gotten used to the bikes’ handling
characteristics on rough terrain and identified the correct spec we needed for
a stage race (see sidebar for that). Remember that cyclocross bikes have their
origins in the muddy fields and gravel roads of Belgium and the Netherlands,
not the razor-edged shale of Groenkloof and the granite- hard rock on Table
Mountain.
Our frames were steel. But what about our arses?
Would the bikes hold up over three days of sani2c? And more importantly,
what about our arses? Sure, we’d done the 2013 race on rigid-fork, singlespeed
29er Cotic Simple mountain bikes, which meant that both physically and
metaphorically we were already somewhat hard-arsed, but this was a whole other
level. At least on those Simples we had large-volume 29 x 2.3 tyres inflated to
the pressure of
a party balloon. They were positively plushy compared to the
teeth-rattlers we were now sitting on.
We hadn’t told sani2c’s acclaimed race founder and organizer Farmer Glen
Haw about our plans either. Afraid he might nix it, we decided instead to pitch
up at the start, sneak into our starting batch and (hopefully) once stage one
was successfully completed, they couldn’t really boot us off. Yes, this was a
mountain bike race but, hey, these were the bikes we regularly rode on the
mountains.
 |
| Matt grabs a little actual air. Really. Look closely |
There was also a performance upside to choosing a cyclocross bike as our
Sani weapon of choice. There’s a fair amount of district road on the race route
and here the bikes should come into their own. After the lycra-melting cadence employed last year trying to keep up with everyone along
the flat bits on our single speeds, the cyclocrossers would allow us to snick
it into a big gear, hunker down on the drops and leave those dual sussers
bobbing up and down behind us in the fine KZN dust.
Looking good. Sort of
And for those initial two-and-a- half days it all went according to plan
and despite being a little slow on the downhill singletrack, we passed plenty
of riders on the district roads. Stage one was physically
the roughest, with
some corrugated ingletrack descents that really
hurt our arms and wrists. The
Hope V-Twin hydraulic disc brakes work well enough but require a lot of
pressure to really make them bite. That means all descents must be tackled with
hands positioned on the handle bar drops, nose right over the front wheel, and fingers pulling on the levers for all they’re worth. Do
that a few times down hard-packed, rutted singletrack and you get the kind of
forearm pump Arnie Schwarzenegger would high-five you for.
We were also worried about our skinny tyres. Would they hold up
on the
rocky descents and give us enough traction on the steeper,
more technical
climbs? Fortunately, experience on a rigid-fork, singlespeed mountain bike
proved invaluable here. You get used to constantly moving your body weight fore
and aft to maximize front and backend grip and it also teaches you to
concentrate all the time. There’s no chillaxing downhill, bombing straight over
rocks and ruts – on the singlespeed you have to manage every single centimetre
of the trail you’re riding. Miss one obstacle and you’re likely to see that
arse you been so busy hardening. On the CX bike this is doubly so. Even though
they’re tubeless, with their small volume rubber you still need to pump the
tyres rock hard (4 bar) to prevent rim damage. And this makes the bike very,
very twitchy over the rough stuff.
 |
| The descent into the Umko valley |
This concentration added a layer of mental fatigue that was even more
taxing than the physical exertion. And sani2c is physically tough, make no
mistake – especially the 100km- long stage two with its 60km climb out of the
Umkomaas valley. Plus this is an actual race so its balls-to- the-wall most of
the way – especially when you’re being chased by a bunch of mountain bikers who
can’t quite disguise how miffed off they are at being passed by “a couple of
flippin’ roadies”. Now add on to that four to six hours of scanning the trail ahead with laser beam intensity and you cross that stage finish
line physically and mentally drained.
So there we were...
Stage three... 230km of the 260km race done and, against all odds,
our
bikes, our wrists and arses had held up. Except now one of us had forgotten to
turn right and punched a large hole in a sizey field of KZN’s finest sugar
cane.
Fortunately two arms appeared from the recesses of the buckled cane
cavity... followed by two very wide eyes. Matt was okay. Oh how
I laughed. The
cockiness was now gone but a few kilometres later however, so was my smile.
Going over a small bump, an audible (and very disconcerting) “crack!” below my
butt together with a wobbly saddle signaled a big problem. My carbon seat post
had snapped. Luckily it was only a couple of kays to the water point where a
local farmer helped me make a splint of two nine-inch nails and swathes of
gaffer tape.
 |
| Yes. Matt was in front most of the day.
But that lasted all of a few kilometres before the saddle slumped off to
the side and I was forced to stand up and pedal the remaining 10 km. Still,
there’s nothing like shard of carbon fibre aimed at one’s bollocks to keep one’s motivation levels up. Spurred on by the
occasional graze of sharp carbon upon thin lycra-covered bollock, we gunned it
across the floating bridge and over the finish line.
|
And that was that.
After months of discussing, strategising and agonizing over our potentially foolish decision, Matt and I had done it. More than that
we’d done it without maiming ourselves or forever damaging some of the more
delicate parts of our anatomy. Even though – in a somewhat surprising move – we
weren’t given a big shiny silver vase for dominating the Men’s Veteran’s
Cyclocross category, there was enough satisfaction in proving that you can not
only do a mountain bike race on a cyclocross bike, but be fairly quick too. We
ended up mid- field in the competitive Race.
 |
| The famous floating bridge at the finish. Note broken seat post |
At the after party later that evening, we had a drink with Farmer Glen
and we finally told him what we’d done. Instead of a reprimand, he hugged us and
laughed. “Guys, you should have told us man! That’s exactly what the spirit of
Sani is all about. Fantastic!!”
Matt and I agreed that this was a way better than getting a shiny silver
vase.
 |
| Done. And dusted |
