Cape Pioneer Trek 2013

Observations from the Plinth

In mid-June of this year, I was fortunate enough to get a place on the massage team for the Bridge Cape Pioneer Trek. After being unable to make it to the 2012 edition, I was more than a little excited to be part of this growing event, which traverses much of the Klein Karoo together with a sprinkling of the Garden Route.

Given my thirst for adventure and love of the job that is team support, I was lucky enough to combine my official duties with Carien Loubser's massage service with that of travelling with and helping out some riders from Cape Town: Xavier Scheepers, Brian Lennox, Shaun Sale, Russell de Jager and Nic Greef. This proved to be an easygoing group of guys, which always helps when working/riding a multi-day stage race.

One thing about the people of the Karoo is their hospitality, not to mention their generosity. We spent the first two nights on a farm just outside Oudtshoorn with Johan and Mindi, who are friends of Xavier. The fact that I was a complete stranger didn't seem to matter to them; we were all treated like kings and fed like the hungry lions that we were.

 

Johan owns a classifieds newspaper in Oudtshoorn and was also working at the race as an all round coordinator. This function was unsurprising with his innate local knowledge and friendly nature, essential attributes for the organizational machine to run smoothly.

His farm is situated on the cement road that ends up at the Calitzdorp Spa. Apart from the beautiful house and manicured garden are some interesting additions, an outdoor bathroom being one of them. Add in a  barn and cottages situated adjacent to the main house, you have a ideal setting for a guesthouse or retreat par excellence.

The Bridge Cape Pioneer Trek is a growing event. This was confirmed in 2013 with several entrants from Belgium, Holland and the Czech Republic. One of my daily massage clients was even from Curacao, a far flung Dutch principality in the Caribbean who was visiting South Africa for the first time. Being a well travelled fellow, Eric was intent on improving his stage-racing pedigree by investing in proper recovery (i.e. the event's massage, nutrition and mechanical service). By the penultimate day he confirmed that this was indeed the case and his performance in South Africa outshone his previous effort at the Trans Rockies in leaps and bounds.

Sometimes that is all it takes to reach a new level. Having basic yet reliable equipment, combine that with proper training, recovery and intuition and you have a winning formula whatever your level of proficiency in any endurance sport.

A recurring aspect of working in this sort of field and a great one at that is the people. Be it new co-workers or reuniting with old friends and familiar faces, the range of personalities and diverse backgrounds is one of the greatest advantages to life on the road. 

Much to my surprise was that I was not the only part-time therapist amongst the massage team. Rudi, who was my neighbour on a few of the days works as a pharmacist in Potchefstroom, combining his day job with sports massage. Then there was Martin who, although not part of the massage team, was busy kneading one of his fellow motorbike marshalls on the plinth next to me in Louvain. It is all about passion for Martin, who breeds horses on a farm between Knysna and Plettenberg Bay, practices massage and holistic healing as well as being a regular on the lead motorbike in events throughout the Garden Route.

It was great to catch up with Harald Zumpt of Polar South Africa. Harald travels to many of South Africa's big endurance events where he and his team provide on-site support for riders using the Polar range of heart rate monitors. Having been a top athlete himself, Harald has a unique perspective when it comes to elite level sport and the elements that make what is an elite athlete. Being sponsor to several athletes brings its challenges but his innate knowledge of this aspect of sport serves him well in this regard. Not many people may know that a quarter of century ago, Harald and fellow a SA triathlete spent several weeks living in a tent on the main beach of Biarritz whilst pursuing their dreams of being professional triathletes. The tent-living was borne out of the prohibitive costs of the studio flat that they had been sharing at the time but was not without its perks; a panoramic view of the French town's vaunted surf break was but one occupational plus of their endless summer.

Harald's stories certainly made my isolated "bergie-ness" seem rather tame. Whilst most nights were spent in the race village tents, I did sleep in the massage hall on two occasions owing to circumstance and my non-inclination to search for an empty tent after finishing massage treatments at 9pm. Those two particular nights did include some rainfall, which certainly influenced by decision. As one of my fellow therapists said: "If you've got a roof over your head and food in your stomach, what more do you want in life?"

Hakim le Rocca's words were certainly in my thoughts on the Friday night as the rain lashed down outside. Most of the riders were put up in the Hoerskool Van Kervel's koshuis (hostel) owing to the glacial conditions outside. Getting back to Hakim: he is an American guy who lives in Cape Town, is married to a Japanese lady and sends his two kids to the French School in the Gardens suburb of Cape Town. Can you get more cosmopolitan than that?

 

Hakim certainly knew how to spend the rare gaps that we had between massage treatments. If he wasn't taking a quick nap then he was getting a quick QL rub from fellow therapists to keep him going. I would usually make a trip to the toilet or see if there was any complimentary tea available during my gaps. On one such toilet break I managed to walk in on a drug test being performed by SAIDS.

Not that I could see who the rider being tested was as he was safely ensconced in the cubicle, but was promptly asked to leave. These guys are strict but I suppose you have to be in that sort of occupation given the bad press that doping as created over last decade or so. They did lighten up for a photo at Saturday's finish though.

As I've alluded to in the past, these sorts of trips are a true holiday for me. Whilst there is a large element of work involved, the adventure and my passion for this sort of environment always seems to win through. My fellow office workers often laugh when they find out what I'm taking leave for. I guess I've always been a bit of wanderer with a penchant for working holidays. These journeys are also a training camp of sort but not in the conventional sense.

Consider my average daily schedule:

• 5am: get up and run 40-50min easy, followed by 5-7x100m strides. Some random Pilates exercises thrown in there or later in the day for some balance/strength work.

• 6am: breakfast followed by packing and carting riders bags to the kombi.

• 7:30am: leave after the stage start and head for the next town, often stopping for shopping/admin en route.

• Mid-morning (sometimes earlier): arrive in stage town, locate physio hall, unpack rider bags and place them in their designated tents. Take my goods to physio hall and relax for an hour before massage tables arrive. Read/take notes/doze for a while.

• 12pm: help with physio hall set up and then head off with the massage crew for lunch.

• 1:15pm: begin early treatments if necessary otherwise loiter around socializing until official 2pm start.

• 7pm: dinner followed by one more treatment ending around 8:45pm

• 9pm: pack up, find a tent and sleep.

A pretty simple lifestyle with a lot of physical activity punctuated by breaks for eating and sleeping. Not much different from that of an elite athlete although the activities are somewhat different. They key thing to remember here is that I was totally removed from my usual day-to-day life and computer. No distractions from the tasks at hand. If you can do this for a week and then recover from it properly, the benefits are incalculable. In fact, that is it exactly the approach that Xavier was taking for this race, effectively shocking himself into shape for various athletic goals that he has for 2014. Super-compensation indeed.

As they say, one only grows by getting out of one's comfort zone. Some times we all need a bit of that.

Thanks to all for making this journey possible. Some random photos below of the week that was.