A TOTAL CYCLE PATH
We sent a cycling novice to South Africa to compete in a 202km race against a peloton full of Ironman veterans. It went as expected…
At the start lines of ultra-distance cycling events, pro riders jostle with competitive triathletes and Ironman veterans. So, obviously, we sent a novice to train for a month, then try to keep up with the elite peloton. It turns out that was slightly optimistic…
“Pedalling in excess of 200km in the space of 10 hours is a demanding task,” reads the website of the 202km Coronation Double- Century (CDC), an annual cycling race in South Africa’s Stellenbosch region. “Even for pro cyclists.”
Breitling has invited Men’s Health to ride the CDC alongside the watch brand’s intrepid Triathlon Squad: Chris “Macca” Mccormack, Jan Frodeno and Daniela Ryf, who have collectively won 14 individual world championships and an Olympic gold at standard and Ironman distances. The #squadonamission’s goal is to raise money for the South African charity Qhubeka, which provides people with bicycles to enable them to access work, education and health care. The Breitling CDC team also includes Olympic gold medallist and seven-time individual mountain-biking world champion Nino Schurter, and consecutive seven-time winner of Ironman Switzerland Ronnie Schildknecht. I, meanwhile, have ridden a bike once in the past 10 years.
When I naively accept my editor’s challenge, the CDC is less than four weeks away. That night, I cycle 25km in 60 minutes on an exercise bike at the gym. At this rate, it’ll take me eight hours to cover 202km. An Ironman cycling leg is normally “just” 180km. At least I won’t have to run a marathon afterwards.
Following a regular week of training – calisthenics, five-a-side, Brazilian jiu-jitsu – I’m conscious that I should actually cycle, but I don’t have a bike. The next best thing is a visit to Athlete Lab, an indoor cycling facility in London that mimics outdoor riding, with big screens displaying performance data. My first session is “HIIT Hurt Box”: I’m such a novice that I don’t even know I should wear padded cycling shorts. I make sure to pick up a pair from Rapha before my next session but, for now, my sitting bones are throbbing.
Athlete Lab’s head of cycling performance, Tom Shanney, explains that, because I haven’t got time to log
distance, I have to compensate with intensity. He isn’t joking. Every session pushes me to the limit. After five in my first week, I hobble to the Equinox St James gym to recover like a pro cyclist with compression therapy: a pair of controlled-pressure trousers squeeze my aching legs in waves from the ankles up to boost circulation and reduce DOMS. The next week, I do it all again. By the end of the following Monday, I’ve racked up 11 sessions in a fortnight, none longer than 90 minutes, and a total of 255km. At the weekend, I’m going to cycle almost as much in one go.
FRAME OF MIND
On Tuesday, I collect my bike – a Canyon Endurace CF SL Disc Aero – from the brand’s HQ in Chessington. Fitting a bike is part science, part art and all-important for performance, comfort and injury prevention. My fitter, Jack Noy, turns the cleat of my right Shimano shoe fractionally outward so my knee tracks straight, and tapes around the seat post so I can easily reset or adjust it. After a few laps of Victoria Park on Wednesday – the first and last time I ride outdoors in my training – I remove the wheels so I can pack it in my Scicon bag, which many pro teams take on the World Tour. Even for the kind of man whose only tools come from Ikea, it’s relatively straightforward.
At dinner in South Africa on the night before the race, I chat to a watch retailer from Houston who does Ironmans and has customised his own bike frame, then a model-cum-influencer from Paris who cycled competitively in his youth. It dawns on me that I may have bitten off more than I can chew.
“The first 65km stretch takes what feels like for ever. I’m now so deep in my pain cave that I don’t even notice the scenery”
At 6.30am, I’m at the start line, in Breitling-branded Q36.5 clothing and Kask helmet (available to buy, with the proceeds going to Qhubeka – see below). I’m behind Iron-distance world record holder Frodeno. He’s riding a Canyon, which makes me feel slightly less out of place. I mention to Ryf, also riding a Canyon, that this is my first cycling race. “Mine, too,” she replies. She has, however, done a few triathlons. The klaxon sounds but I only manage to clip one foot in; Frodeno stops me toppling over in full view of the bemused teams behind us.
Riding in the middle of a peloton shields you from wind resistance, reducing the effort required by 30%. But, despite pedalling furiously, I inexorably drop back, watching helplessly as my Breitling teammates disappear. My gear is likely too high and my revolutions per minute too low, fatiguing my legs. But unlike everybody else, I don’t have a bike computer to tell me this, or the knowledge of how to use the gears properly. As I chug along, other teams fly past like piston- engined trains. My ride just got a third more difficult.
HELL ON WHEELS
It takes me well over an hour to reach the first refreshment station, 32km in, where I down a shot of full-sugar Coca- Cola. The three 300kcal Clif Bars I stashed in my jersey’s back pockets turn out to be woefully insufficient fuel: the CDC’S nutrition guide (which I didn’t digest) recommends one to two bars every hour. Some riders eat and drink every 15 minutes for a steady energy supply, and fill their bottles with half Coke, half water.
The 65km stretch to the first feed station takes what feels like for ever, although it’s probably only three hours. I might not have made it were it not for an older, wiser cyclist who gave me valuable gearing advice and encouragement as he passed. At the feed station, I stuff down as much banana bread and salted potatoes as I can stomach. A sick rider waits in the shade to be picked up. I’m sorely tempted to join him, but I resolve to try for the next station, at 115km.
I’m so deep in my pain cave that I don’t even notice the scenery. Two things sustain me. First, I pass someone. I tell
him, helpfully, to keep going. Second, I see a sign: “100km to go.” Hardly reassuring, but I didn’t think I’d come that far. On a bumpy, uphill section into a brutal headwind, the thought of quitting goes round in my head like a spoke. I cope by looking at the ground instead of the remaining climb. By the time I make the next station, the Breitling team support vehicle is long gone. The car tailing me, it transpires, is the sweep vehicle that acts as a cut- off. I am dead last. I’m allowed to continue, but the engine just feet away only adds to my internal clamour to call it a day.
FIGHT TO THE FINISH
Out on the road, I have a lot of time to think. I think about all the people who have helped me prepare, to whom I’ll have to explain my failure. I think about my family. I think about all the occasions in my life that I’ve come up short. I think about what kind of man I am.
Time passes, and I pass a couple more people, riding or sitting by the side of the road out of the afternoon sun and 30ºc heat, waiting to be swept (I’m later told that there were quite a few dropouts further ahead). At the team support station at 160km, a doctor helps me stretch out my cramping left calf; delirious from exhaustion, I temporarily forget the word “pocket”. Again, the Breitling vehicle is long gone, but I find solidarity in brief interactions with my fellow stragglers. We’re all on the same team now.
The gradual realisation that I might actually make it is a psychological shot of Coke. The signs come at shorter, more regular intervals: 40km, 30km, 20km. After a cruel final climb, I cross the finish line 11 hours after I set out, two marshals my only witnesses. When I take off my helmet, I can still feel its impression. I’ve got pins and needles in my genitalia.
“Sports like this test you,” says Macca. “And there’s a real feeling of reward at the end of accomplishing something so massive.” He almost gives me more respect for riding so long solo than if I’d kept pace with the Breitling team. Individual feats of endurance such as this or an Ironman present the opportunity to have “an absolutely honest conversation with yourself for the first time in your life” – a rare chance to try to weather what he calls the “storms”.
“I try to think in steps, so [I keep my eyes on what’s] not too far ahead,” says Ryf, who was badly stung by jellyfish at the 2018 Ironman world championship in Hawaii before the swim even started. Close to quitting, 226km from finishing, she focused on making it to the next buoy. She went on to win a fourth world title and break her own world record.
Ryf was inspired to persevere by fellow Breitling Triathlon Squad member Frodeno who, the year before, his back injured, walked almost all of the running leg – a marathon. “The agony that I feel when I don’t finish a race sticks with me for months,” he says, echoing a quote by six-time Ironman world champion Mark Allen on the wall at Athlete Lab that I stared at during my 11 training sessions: “You can keep going and your legs might hurt for a week, or you can quit and your mind will hurt for lifetime.”
My legs hurt for a week.