Three days to Epic pain

The Cape Epic mountain bike race begins on Saturday. This is an eight day, 900km bike race, covering 15km of accumulated vertical, much of it in the forsaken desert of the Little Karoo. For reasons incomprehensible, I will be riding this race.

Looks hot out there

I think my partner and I have fair reason to be nervous. A quick scroll through some of the Cape Epic blogs online is deeply disturbing. It would appear that these people have not only been training for this race for months, but that they have been doing little else. Granted, someone who writes an entire blog just about training for a mountain bike race is probably going to be on the intense side of things, but this sort of thing is worrying all the same. M and I have taken the attitude to training that it should be fun. So when we've felt like sleeping in, or taking it easy, or had other things planned... well the training rides can wait.

Not to mention that two months ago my partner got a new bike, adding one more excuse not to train hard... "I gotta take it easy, I don't want to hurt my knees adjusting to a new bike." So when the rider communication email came about two weeks ago encouraging us to enjoy our "tapering off" period, we were thinking it was probably time to start doing some tougher training rides.

The only thing in our favor is that we live in Lesotho - where the smoothest back roads are probably bumpier than the worst that the Cape Epic can throw at us. And our bodies are adjusted to the dizzying elevation of 5600 feet. Training, whatever! We don't need to train hard, we live at ALTITUDE!!

The motley advice on the site of a guy called "Spinman" seems to be unintentionally funny... such as "take it easy on days 1 and 2." Day 1 is 2660m of vertical climbing over 105km. Day 2 is 2200m of vertical over 134km. How exactly are we supposed to take it easy? We will struggle to finish by sunset.

Here's another good one: "Finish your washing by noon if you want it to dry." This seems to imply arriving in the race village well before noon. This advice clearly does not apply to us.

Or this: "I finished like this, in spite of two raw holes 30x30mm, and 6mm deep, one on either cheek on the hotspot where the bum bones carry one's weight on the saddle." The advice I think was to apply duct tape. The better advice seems to be: DON'T RIDE THIS STUPID RACE!

This one is rich: "Be physically and mentally prepared." It comes up twice. If only somebody had given us this advice sooner!

So pretty much, we're dead.

Having run out of time to train, we've searched for commitment mechanisms. My partner's mountain biking friends back home are subscribed to his results page, so he has the added motivation not to give up, knowing they will all find out and begin ridiculing him almost before he has dragged his sorry ass off the course. A few good folk have put up money for an orphanage in Semonkong for every kilometre that we ride, so that we know we're doing it for the children. And my flight leaves Cape Town the morning after the race... so if I don't make it, the ride back to Lesotho is going to be a lot longer than just finishing the stupid race on time. Weak, but its the best we could come up with.

If this blog goes silent after this post, it means my bleached bones are roasting somewhere in the middle of the Little Karoo. Either that or I had too much pride to post about just how badly I did.

So wish us luck... we are going to need it in a big way...