Fleeting Trips, Long Runs and Gear Ratios
I love travelling, especially spur
of the moment trips. Throw in an event/special purpose that entails lots of
driving and logistics on-the-move combined with some training in a totally
unfamiliar environment and I can be happy for a long time. The only rule is to
travel as light as possible.
It seems that these sort of trips
have an even more special feel when daily life is actually too busy to
contemplate or even justify time away. I can remember reading a great piece by
an acclaimed athletic writer advocating
things like deliberately taking the long route to an important meeting even it
meant being late, or sitting in a park doing nothing for a half-hour in the
middle of an excessively busy work day. It is amazing how these simple things
can actually affect our daily and sporting lives in a wholly positive way. It
is just the implementation that can at times be rather challenging.
My travel companions certainly fit
this bill given their busy daily lives. Yet our fleeting trip to the 2014 Fairview Attakwas Extreme MTB Challenge was
important to each of us for different reasons. Xavier and Andy are getting
ready for decent assault on the ABSA Cape epic in March. With around nine weeks
to go to the eight day trek across the Western Cape, Attakwas provides an ideal
indicator of fitness and compatibility for many a team, elite or back marker.
I've always had a keen interest in
the many multi-faceted individuals that make up any sport, something which I
alluded to in a previous post.
These sorts of people are always interesting and serve to motivate me in my own
ventures, be it sporting or work or whatever. Mark Allen once wrote that he
admired fellow rival Scott
Tinely for always having another form of job in addition to being a
professional athlete. He went on to relate how Tinley would have accomplished
more in one day across a broad spectrum than he could imagine doing in a month.
Seeing as the life a professional athlete is all-consuming, these sort of
overcommitted individuals are rare in elite sport. Yet they are dime-a-dozen in
the amateur and semi-pro ranks.
A few months ago, I had an
interesting conversation with a young fellow who could best be described as an
elite rider without financial backing. His previous sponsorship ended about three
years ago and he has continued to race self-funded, all the while building an
online bicycle and accessories business in tandem. This venture has grown into
his sole form of income. He told me it was unlikely that he would be riding at
his level that if it wasn't for his business. Yet he is happy with his lot,
with his athletic and commercial pursuits complementing each other well.
Seeing Xavier answering at least
half dozen business calls during our
five hour commute to the Klein Karoo confirmed the following: a person needs to
enjoy the lifestyle that a sport like cycling offers, regardless of their
function. Here is a guy who is trying to prepare for an eight day stage race
whilst juggling two businesses and a young family. I'm pretty confident that he
wouldn't manage this balancing act as well as he does if he was following a
rigid training schedule. Whilst his race ended early with some major
mechanicals, his natural disappointment in the outcome was tempered somewhat by
his imminent return home to his family to enjoy the rest of the weekend.
Results and profits aside, the
experience, adventure and sense of community that emerge be it as a rider,
supporter, coach, mechanic etc are the true worth of such sporting trips, at
least they are for me. Add in some of the more picturesque surroundings that
our country has to offer and you have a great formula for combining work with
some fun.
Case in point my own role in our own
fleeting tour. Having arrived at the finish town of Groot Brakrivier much earlier than
anticipated and with the leaders not expected until late morning, I decided to
make the most of my time in the unfamiliar, yet beautiful landscape. With this
time of the year involving my getting ready for one of South Africa's foremost ultra-marathons,
I like to try and do one long run per week, usually on the weekend. Whilst
originally intending to do exactly that from home on Sunday, the unexpected
availability of time and dramatic surrounds overcame any resolve to save it for
the next day. I just could not resist the desire to go long in another town.
Needless to say that this decision proved to be the right one: the ensuing
two-and-bit hours on foot became an adventure through rivers, over secluded
beaches, inside private resorts (unintended) and around grassy verges providing
a sense of exhilaration and satisfaction that could not possibly be achieved in
my home surroundings. True super-compensation in the best sense of the term,
albeit unplanned and unexpected.
Equally unexpected was the race performance
of one of our travel companions. Justin is a bike mechanic from Cape Town who was
busy servicing Andy's brakes in our host Johan's garage late on Friday evening.
He had copped a bit of flak from us about is ambitious gear ratio, which would
normally be reserved for those who ride for pay. All credit to him for shutting
us all up and riding to a superb top-25 finish, a few minutes ahead of Andy. As
they say, never underestimate the unassuming.
Arriving home less than thirty hours
after departing, all the boxes were ticked on my own “to do” list. After over a
thousand kilometres of driving, a couple hours on foot, late night errand
running in Outdsoorn pre-race, performing one massage treatment under a tree
overlooking an estuary, a short meeting with a future employer, unloading and
repacking the bus a few times, acquiring some decent mosquito spray, dazzling a
bemused Wimpy employee by ordering takeaway tea instead of coffee,
reacquainting with some old faces and gardening with our hosts two year old
son, I'm back home tired but content in what the time away amounted to.
Now for the tried and tested
recovery formula of good food, sleep and vitamin C.
