MOMENTS LIKE THESE
WHEN YOU GET TO SHARE A DREAM WITH YOUR DAD, EVEN A LATE RACE SURGE CAN’T STOP YOU.
B“Becoming free is learning about yourself; the scared and the insecure, the brilliant and the bold. Embrace both, and the journey is yours and yours alone. No longer are you following another’s directions; and your path and purpose will present themselves. Only then might you find another wandering soul doing the same thing – who can walk with you, but on their own journey. All of a sudden you might find a shared passion, and a wrinkled map on the trail that makes sense.”
– RIITTA KLINT, ARTIST
Before I knew it, he’d gapped me by 100m. We had descended from Suikerbossie and were on the flat roads towards Camps Bay, when my 77-year-old father – riding his first-ever Cape Town Cycle Tour – had surged.
We were less than 10km from the finish; and like a true thoroughbred, he was starting to smell the stables.
“Hang on a bit – there’s still that nasty little climb out of Camps Bay, so don’t get cocky now,” I said, as I finally managed to catch him.
Just six months before, my dad – who only took up riding four years ago – had declared that he was ‘considering’ riding the Cycle Tour. In dad language, that means ‘I’m really keen to ride the Cycle Tour, but I’m hedging my bets in case I don’t make it to the start line.’
My father has always been active and healthy. He’s run the Comrades and the Two Oceans, was a scratch
golfer in his youth and a top league squash player for years, and has the cholesterol levels of a 25-year-old.
So when he takes to something, he’s likely to take to it full gas.
He started his cycling career on a cheap supermarket special, determined not to overcapitalise on his equipment. But as his rides around Summerveld Estate near his home in Kloof, KZN started getting more serious, so did his need for better gear.
My dad doesn’t part with money easily, so it took months to convince him to buy a new Cannondale dual-suspension rig.
“You could almost buy a car for that,” he would retort – not realising that these days, you probably couldn’t.
The dual-sus was bought not for its ability to handle tough technical mountain biking or stage events, but rather to reduce the jarring on his back. To this day, he keeps the suspension in full DH mode while bobbing along the Durban beachfront on his favourite training ground, from the water park to Blue Lagoon and back.
In the build-up to the Cycle Tour, my eldest son – himself a competitive elite rider – happily accompanied my trundling father, while introducing him to the value of the perfect casquette, the preride java, and the subtleties of posting just the right kind of picture on Instagram.
Slowly but surely, my dad was becoming a cyclist. He set up a Strava account, bought cycling shorts that actually fit him, and learnt how to pull a water bottle from its cage and drink from it while riding (until then, water stops had been exactly that… water stops!). He even took on a tour along the Garden Route, with riders 15 years his junior, and started throwing in 80km-plus training rides as the Cycle Tour start drew ever nearer.
RELAXED GEOMETRY
Our biggest challenge remained the choice of bike for the Cycle Tour. I have a gravel bike, and with its relaxed geometry, disc brakes, wide tyres and generous gearing, I knew it would roll much better than his bobbing, knobbly-tyred dual-sus MTB.
Over Christmas we experimented with my older steel road bike; but its poor braking and more aggressive body position made the riding uncomfortable. So we settled on the gravel grinder, a heavy Specialized Sequioa adventure bike – with a few alterations.
For a start, the cleat pedals would have to come off. Despite hours spent trying to convince my dad that cleats would offer more speed and stability, he refused to consider the use of clip-in pedals.
And, I guess, for good reason: just over 18 months previously he’d caught his tyre in a rut on his favourite beachfront, and ended up hitting a bollard and knocking out his front teeth. He remained toothless for over eight months while the repair work was done; and the prospect of falling, and being unable to uncleat, was a risk he was simply not willing to take.
So; flat pedals it was, (un)coupled with his trusty Adidas running shoes.
We also opted for the comfy saddle he’d used during training to replace the more racy version on the Sequioa, while an ample lathering of Ass Magic on race day would ensure maximum comfort at the most vulnerable contact point.
RACE
There can be no denying that the responsibility of keeping my dad safe on the day rested heavily on my shoulders. The Cycle Tour can be a dangerous place for a rider unused to big groups, fast descents, and a bike he’d only ridden twice.
I warned him about the descent at Hospital Bend, near the start, and how the crazies would dash down past us in their adrenalin-fuelled desire to hang with their start group.
I told him about Wynberg Hill: how hitting this section so early is a rude shock, but how the crowds would get you up, and that it was downhill after that.
I reminded him of the advice he once gave me, before I did my maiden Comrades in 2004:
“Imagine your energy is a sachet of water, and there’s a tiny hole that you’ve bitten off at the top. Now imagine just squeezing a little bit of that energy out, only when you have to.”
I told him we would fly down the Blue Route, but to stick to the left as the faster groups would come shunting past us; and that it was relatively flat until we’d got down towards Simon’s Town.
Then we would have to survive Chapmans and Suikerbossie, before the glory kays towards Camps Bay and the finish. It would be the furthest he had ever ridden, by almost 30km; but we would get there.
Once the bike set-up was done the day before, we cruised out for a technical check, so he could get used to the different gear and brake actions on the roadequipped adventure bike. It was an essential part of the process, since figuring out gears and brakes on race day was the last thing I wanted him to worry about.
Finally the day dawned, with a 4.30am wake-up. Our start time was 6.50am, and we had to ensure we would reach our start pens fully prepared, with some contingency time planned in.
We joked nervously about our predicted finishing time, but I could see that he was genuinely worried about not making it in under seven hours, before the final cut-off. I felt that pressure too.
But the weather was on our side. As we drove in to town, the palm trees on Nelson Mandela Boulevard remained eerily still – a far cry from the mayhem of 2017. I breathed a sigh of relief.
START
I was proud to be part of the new start near the City Hall. The early morning fireworks, the old castle, the mountain above us bathed in the warm earlymorning sunshine... it was magical, and special – and made even more so by my own situation.
We started slowly, quickly losing contact with our start bunch as we headed up that deceptively tough section towards Hospital Bend. My dad kept his cadence high and relaxed, but I could see his mind fighting with his own self-doubt. Neither of us knew how this day would go.
Onlookers cheered us, and groups behind us stormed past – their whirring chains and chatting punctuated by heavy breathing, and shouts of ‘Coming right!’
As we approached the Hospital Bend descent,
I rode in behind him. My natural instinct was to protect him from the masses of faster, crazier riders behind, who darted left and right of us as we dived down and hit the section past UCT.
My wife and young daughter stood on the side of the road in Newlands, and I waved at them as we cruised past. My dad was too focused to see them.
“He just had a massive smile on his face,” my wife remarked later. “He looked so happy.”
The crowd carried us up Wynberg Hill, the first real test of the day, and we kept left on the downhill on to the M3.
We rode past an accident that must have happened just moments before; later we found out that someone had died in the pile-up – the first time such a tragedy had happened at the Cycle Tour in many years. For a while, I stayed even closer to my dad.
We stopped at the water point at the end of the Blue Route for him to fill his bottle with his favoured
mixture of Coke and water. “It got me through Comrades; it can get me through this,” he quipped.
Then we bumped into radio journalist and presenter Brad Brown, who had decided that just riding the Cycle Tour was a far better proposition than racing it. Like me, Brad’s a big fella; and as we rode behind my dad along through Muizenberg and towards Simon’s Town, our combined size on the road was enough to create a safe bubble around him.
I was beginning to get a sense of my dad’s ability, though. He was riding strong. His cadence was high, but comfortable, and he was measuring his effort perfectly.
In Simon’s Town I pulled over to see if he wanted a refill, but he simply carried on, eager to keep his pace and ensure he got to halfway before his goal time of 2 hours 30 minutes.
Up Smits, Brad and I chatted as my father methodically made his way up the hill – never faltering. He never looked like walking, and we were starting to catch some of the riders who had started ahead of us.
Over the top, and we could relax, as gravity drew us down towards Misty Cliffs and the halfway point. We’d cruised through 55km in 2:15 – way ahead of schedule.
Brad and I stepped up our guard duty as we hit the rough road through Misty Cliffs. It was the first time that I sensed my dad was starting to feel the effort. His pace had slowed just a little, and there was still a lot more climbing to do.
I saw the effort in his face he fought his way up the hill towards Ocean View – one of those unnamed challenges of the Cycle Tour that can punish tired legs – and was relieved for him as we cruised towards Sun Valley and the drag towards the base of Chapman’s, looming over us.
It was time for a break. We stopped at the water point just before Chapman’s, replenished our water bottles, stretched our backs; and together with Brad, we got our minds right.
Chapman’s is one of those climbs that always rides more easily than you’d expect from the fearsome reputation it presents on a profile. The initial climb up Little Chappies is the tough part, before you descend and then start climbing again.
The masses began to descend on us as we made our way up. I leaned a hand on my dad’s back as the pitch rose in the last two kays, but I was never really sure if he needed it or not. He was working hard, but never looked likely to get off and walk.
We began to pass riders who were walking, or riding more slowly than us, and I could see his confidence growing with every ‘victory’.
Before we knew it, we were dropping down the flowing descent to Hout Bay.
One more challenge to come.
HEAD DOWN
Suikerbossie is THE hill of the Cape Town Cycle Tour. Its 2.3km is preceded by a steep one-kay climb through Hout Bay central, and it rises ominously ahead as you breach its base. The key to riding the ‘Bossie is to keep your head down. The more you look at what’s coming, the more elusive the summit seems.
But we were riding.
I had expected to walk up at least some of Suikerbossie. It’s the graveyard of backmarkers, as tired legs accede to the kilometres already covered, and minds lose their resolve.
But not my dad. He dropped down to the granny gear, kept his head down, and drew strength from the plodding riders next to him. He was quiet as I kept encouraging him; occasionally I gave a gentle push, when I thought he might be flagging.
“Where’s the top?!” he asked, as the Virgin Active activation came into view.
“We’re almost there, Dad,” I encouraged. “At that red banner, it starts to flatten out.”
We stopped for a break. I could see he wasn’t going to walk; a chance to recoup was all he needed, before he resolutely got going again and crested the hill.
There is nothing quite like the last 15km of the Cycle Tour. The swooping bends are free of cars and offer a chance to make up time for free. But it’s more about the relief of knowing that the worst is over… that you’ve earned those swooping descents, and the eventual finish.
So when my dad surged, so did the pride growing in my heart. We would do it – and we would do it well.
The finish line drew nearer, and I almost wished it wasn’t over. I took out my phone and filmed my father crossing the line, as the race announcer called out our names.
We collected our medals and stood arm-over-arm for the official photographer to get our finishing shot. Our time: five hours, 22 minutes; and my Dad had finished 78th out of the 120 riders in the 75-79 age group.
But that wasn’t important at all.
WHEN MY DAD SURGED, SO DID THE PRIDE GROWING IN MY HEART. WE WOULD DO IT – AND WE WOULD DO IT WELL.