RACE REPORT
One way of looking at the Munga Grit Tankwa is a 180km ride, then a hike up table mountain pushing your bike, then another 300km ride.
But it is much harder than that, and more beautiful.
This was my second attempt at the Tankwa Grit, the first ended at RV1, and a long drive with Dusty Day and another rider whose name I forget and so I felt that there was some unfinished business. Blog link
I hereby declare the business finished.
Conditions were perfect – a full moon rising just before sunset, none of the horrible wind from last year (70kmph on Ouberg as measured by the weather station) and none of the mind bending heat the Tankwa is capable of.
Yet this is still one of the hardest races I’ve done. Unlike the more than twice-as-long Munga, the Grit has two significant climbs, Ouberg and Katbakkies, the latter coming just 70km from the finish.
There’s also an unbelievable descent down the Gannaga pass into the open arid plain of the Tankwa national park 600 meters below. A real highlight.
These long rides that take me to my physical limit do something extraordinary to the mind. The distance opens the spaces between thoughts. The scale and majesty of the landscape and the slow progress across it calls one’s soul to the surface. The wind and the dirt and the effort grind away the carapace of the everyday and leave one sensitized, attuned to the world, and responsive to its beauty.
I return with my body drained but my mind refreshed and my senses tingling. It feels like a psychic wash, a cleansing of psyche.
Coming back to the tar and traffic and cell phones and noise and madness of the world is disconcerting.
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The race infrastructure is superb. The Munga events are rooted in relationships with the people of the land they traverse and the hospitality, food and shelter at the waterpoints and race villages is wonderful. The highlight was a potjie with rice packed with 5 or 6 different vegetables at the last waterpoint. I got there at sunset and I felt my body absorb its nourishment.
Jack Black (Jacques Swart) and his family and crew do a superb job of overseeing the event which is a bike race for sure, but is also an expression of community. No other event organizer greets me as a mid-pack nobody Mamil by name and a handshake.
Ambulances and medics are in evidence all along the route. When the water points are far apart, there are jojo tanks with water. Very well run.
My good friend @lechatnoir came through on Friday morning and saw me off and welcomed me at the finish line at 1:45am on Sunday morning. In the freezing cold. What a man.
