Carlog

THE COMMENTS COLUMN I crossed the finish line at Doolhof Wine Estate in Wellington 3 days 23 hours 8 minutes after leaving Bloemfontein at 12 pm on 28 November. I was the 57th rider across the line. Another 51 riders would cross after me, while around 30 would abandon the event somewhere along the 1076km route. Of the nearly 96 hours it took to reach Doolhof, 68 of them were spent in the saddle. Curiously, of the 28 hours off the bike, I only slept ‘properly’ on two occasions – on Thursday for 1½ hours and on Friday for 3 hours. From my GPS data and recollection, I also got horizontal on 8 other occasions totaling some 4 hours. These were usually 15-minute lie downs where I may or may not have dozed off. That’s a moving average speed of 15,9kph and 11kph if you include the stops. While I achieved my ‘goal’ of completing it in under four days, it didn’t happen anything like my Excel version of the race. On reflection, I don’t think I could have gone any faster on the day – a satisfying admission. The end. Or is it? It’s a feature of our mostly capitalist culture that results matter. Very often it’s all that matters. Score boards don’t have comments columns and income statements reflect how much money was made, not how it was made. But, the journey is important. The how, does matter. Participating in The Munga has reminded me that the fullness of life comes mostly from the journey, not the result. So here is the story of my race. Having had the foresight not to trust my aging and sleep deprived memory I recorded 48 video clips during the race. Add to that the objective GPS data from my Garmin(s) and some fact checking with other riders, what follows is the ‘comments column’ next to position 57 on the results sheet of The Munga 2018. BRING A SHOVEL Kilometre 370, 9am-ish, Thursday. 21hours since departure. “Just so we’re clear: is this that call where I tell you to harden up and ride your bike? Because if it is – just harden up and ride your bike.” It’s around 9 am in the morning and my Garmin tells me I’m about 30km from the second race village (RV) in Britstown. That puts me about 370km from Bloemfontein. At this point, I haven’t slept since I woke up 27 hours ago. I’ve been stopped for a total of 2h49 since we started at midday the previous day, and I’m already about 4 hours ahead of my most optimistic pre-race Excel predictions. Except, I’m not. The familiar voice belongs to my wife. She’s doing exactly what we agreed weeks before: “Look babe: under no circumstance can you allow me to quit the race. If I can hold my phone and dial, I’m good enough to carry on, no matter what I say or how I sound. Only the medics can pull me off the course and even they will have to catch me first.” I had joked before the race about finishing even if I had to crawl over the line carrying a wet, bleeding limb over my shoulder. I will not make that joke again. You see, I had called to tell her that I ‘moered’ a rock with my pedal during the first night. My Achilles had been swelling since and was now completely seized. Unable to flex my left ankle, my left knee was now so sore that I could no longer stand and pedal. I had told her I thought about quitting. How could I possibly do another 700km’s? That’s double what I’d already done, with all the real climbing still to come. With just one leg. What if I did permanent damage? Surely, I wouldn’t make the finish? That’s when she told me to harden up and ride my bike. Like we agreed. So that’s what I did. Kilometre 981, 4:22 am Sunday. 88h22 since departure. It’s been five hours since I left the famed Tankwa Padstal at 11:41 pm the previous evening. My odometer has advanced just 45km in that time. I try and do the math. Last time I slept more than 15 minutes was over 30hours ago in Fraserburg. I try and do the math. It’s been an unrelenting, gradual, torturous uphill for five hours. I try and do the math: “45km. 5 hours. 45 divided by 5. Whats that? Less than 10… 9. 9kph! This hill ends at about kilometre 990. Where am I now? 881km. That’s… 990 minus 881… Think! …9. 9km left. At 9kph. One. More. Hour. F**k.” It’s 6 degrees Celsius outside and my knees feel the same inside. My bicycle is in the middle of the road. I am stumbling around it, stiff legged. The pitch black of night makes one last stand against the rising sun and loses the battle for another day. The silhouettes of orderly planted orchards begin to show themselves. So too does the top of this damned mountain. I can see it. Unable to bend my frozen, swollen knees I cannot get on my bike. I start my stiff legged walk toward the summit. Like Captain Hook with two wooden legs and no boat to sail. Having seen no-one all night I am startled by the sight of another cyclist. It’s Leonard Martin – this chap has legs like a rhinoceros. Perhaps he can loan me one? He storms past me at about 8kph. At least he’s on his bike. Again, I try and mount my bike. I get on the saddle and get a few pedal turns. That’s good. My knees only bend enough to pedal with my heels. F**k. This won’t work. Get off. Push. Walk. I scream into the void. I swear some more. I eventually completed the 8,6km to the top in 1h07 - 7,5kph. At the top, the rising sun mercifully warmed the icy air. The road flattened. The two Myprodols I took at 4am did their job as advertised. Without pain to slow me down, I was moving again. Back at the Tankwa Padstal I met Adrian Saffy. He couldn’t take his helmet off nor do up his buttons. A common consequence of non-stop multi-day events is nerve damage to your hands. It’s like changing the language to Mandarin on your iPhone: Imagine your brain is speaking English, but your fingers now only understand Mandarin. Your brain tells your fingers to open the zipper, but they scratch your arse instead. He tells me how, the previous night, he had to change the batteries on his GPS. His fingers weren’t even responding to his swearing and he simply had to wait in the middle of the road until another rider stopped to do it for him. He’s lucky there was another rider. He could only change gears by jabbing at them with the palms of his hands. As if this was not enough atonement for something in his past, he had developed bleeding saddle sores and could not sit. He was carrying a big shovel. Forget the energy gels and caffeine shots. On The Munga you need to bring your shovel. If, like me, you’re a novice to ultra-endurance races, you will probably have to dig deeper than you ever have before. At the race briefing two hours before the start, Alex Harris, race director, tells us “You are about to encounter a compressed, highly emotional version of the rest of your life. This race is like life - not everything is planned or polished. If you expect that we’ve marked every aardvark hole and sharp turn you’re in the wrong race briefing.” If you plan to cross the finish line for the first time, prepare to dig deep. For somewhere on that 1076km track there will be an unmarked, dark aardvark hole you will have to dig yourself out of. HELLO DARKNESS MY OLD FRIEND Kilometre 162, 7:30 pm Wednesday. 7h30 since departure It’s my first sunset in The Munga and only the second time in my life I have ridden into the darkness. I am reminded of two elementary things: First, the sun sets in the west. Second, the race route is roughly south-west the whole way. Next time, I shall bring a peak and better sunglasses. Riding through the night in The Munga is near impossible to replicate anywhere else. It’s remote - much of what you travel through is over 70-odd private farms, away from cities and lights. Oftentimes there is no other visible light and I can’t recall seeing more than a handful of people over all four nights. It’s flat and dark so you cannot estimate distance well. You could find yourself chasing down a little bobbing red light for an hour or eleven. In one instance, desperate for some company, I chased down an imaginary cyclist for two hours only to find it was a stationary fire bakkie with its light on. By 4:45 am on the first night I was frozen through. Although the mercury didn’t go below 8 degrees, the wind made sure those 8 degrees found its way into every joint, bone and tendon. In a video to myself I had icicles hanging from my nose. The only item I wasn’t wearing was my space blanket and medical kit. A karoo sunrise is magical most days. It’s especially magical if you’re cold and been waiting all night on your bicycle for it. Sticking to my plan I tried to sleep at around 3 pm on Thursday for the first time. Not knowing what tired really is, I thought I would just fall asleep. Instead, all I ended up doing was lying on a mattress listening to people coming in and out the water point. I left after an hour. Although frustrated I took away an important lesson – have a plan, but be flexible and adapt quickly to the reality of the circumstances on the ground. Eventually, at 9pm on Thursday night, 38 hours after I last woke up, the hallucinations were enough to convince me I finally needed to sleep. Having ‘planned’ to sleep wild, I found an open-ish spot a few metres off the jeep track. In what I thought was a welcome flash of brilliance I made some noise to chase away imaginary nocturnal critters – I had heard of enough puff adder sightings to focus even my sleep-deprived mind. Still amazed at my own genius I lay down. On rocks. ‘Comfortable’ is not how I would describe it. Nonetheless, I wriggled around the big rocks and flattened my karoo rock bed as best I could. Trying to fold myself into my space blanket took a few minutes, but eventually I set the timer to 90 minutes. And slept. To say it was the best sleep of my life would be a significant embellishment of the truth. Sleeping out in the open, in unfamiliar territory, in a country with a murder rate higher than Escobar’s Columbia is unsettling. It’s also normally unnecessary: when last did you try and sleep in the dirt on a training ride? Or when last did you do a training ride where you didn’t sleep for 38 hours? The most ‘practice’ I got was unfolding my space blanket at home and taking a week to refold it to the original size. Therein lies the masochistic attraction of The Munga: you will have to manage a variety of first-time challenges in a foreign, but reasonably safe, environment. There will be challenges that you are unable to replicate in training, and therefore unable to predict how you will react to. It’s the ‘unknown unknowns’ of The Munga, and how you react to them, that make it such a deeply satisfying event to participate in. OUT TO DRY Kilometre 687, Fraserburg. 6:07 pm Friday. 54h06 since departure I left the race village in Loxton at 9:12 am, Friday morning. My knee was properly sore. The medic had done a great job of re-strapping it and the Myprodols I ‘loaned’ from Gavin Robinson once again were working as advertised. My GPS stopped working about 5km outside Loxton on the way in which meant I had to wait for other riders to follow to the race village. Time with the medic; a failed attempt at a nap; time trying to activate a loan GPS and time scrounging for veterinary-grade pain killers added up to two hours at the RV. Despite the delays I still left the RV with new resolve and even called my wife to tell her things were looking up and the wind was at my back. Roll forward 8 hours 41 minutes. Fraserburg. Just 98 kilometres down the track. Just 374m ascent – i.e. flat. Average speed: 11,2kph. The problem, you see, was a bastard, devil-of-a-wind. It was going back to Loxton and we were going to Fraserburg. It was blowing so hard that chickens were laying the same egg three times. This part of the world is so flat that, as Mike Woolnough puts it, “you could watch your dog run away for a week.” The wind has got half a continent to pick up speed and, on this day, at that time, on those 100km of road, it was in a great rush to get where I was not going. The wind could have been doing 100kph. The temperature could have been 70 degrees. The facts didn’t matter here. It was brutal. It was torturous. As if the physical effort required wasn’t enough to break me, I could see Fraserburg in the distance for nearly three hours. I just couldn’t get there. On the video clips I took you cannot hear what I’m saying over the howling wind. My mouth was dryer than a camel’s arse in a sandstorm and, at one point, on a dead flat piece of road, I actually stopped to push my bike. And I cried. I’m sitting on the pavement outside JJ’s Café. Busted. Wind- and sunburnt. I have inhaled two of JJ’s most-bestest chicken burgers and three ginormous samoosas of indeterminable filling. Bloody good, mind you. I am faced with a decision: push on in roughly the same direction against the same son-of-a-devil headwind or get some sleep and hope, hope, hope, that the bastard wind exhausts itself. It wasn’t really a decision – I had some hours ago made up my mind I would find any rationale to somehow rest up in Fraserburg. When I woke at 10pm, after three restless, painful hours of sleep, I looked at the tops of the trees. In a rare gift from the course, they were motionless. SOUL FOOD The water points are a unique feature of this race. They are expected to be operational for up to 100-odd hours, servicing just 150 riders. They are manned by farmers and are mostly at farmers houses on route. Aside from water, there’s no guarantee what you’ll get. Farmers are given a free hand to interpret the requirements as they see fit. At some point you’ll peanut butter your own peanut butter sandwich. You’ll most often make your own Starbucks Coffee. You may get a braaied boerie, butter cookies, or ‘zambane. In the normal course of our everything-within-reach consumerist lives these are what I think we’d call ‘basic’. Without exception, I left every water point feeling better than when I got there. Under Munga conditions an uncooked potato tastes like a Michelin star entry and I’ve had banana bread that would be a serious contender for a Masterchef win. Without exception, the people at each water point are living, breathing, examples of what human generosity of spirit looks and feels like. I’ve never been called “Oom” this often in my life nor had so many offers to be fed. Have you ever had a freshly toasted boerie ciabatta with magic sauce made by Angelo, his dog Enzo, Magriet and the chap with the cap that just climbed a mountain in Russia after you put 867km through a busted knee and 30 hours of no sleep? In The Munga you will. Have you ever inhaled 10 slices of freshly made banana bread and hot black tea after 351km when you’re feeling invincible because you’ve just clocked off 50km in an hour forty-five? In The Munga I did. PLAYING FROM THE ROUGH My preparation for my first ultra-distance race included reviewing the route using google earth. Don’t laugh. The problem with using google earth to try and do this is that that the image is, at maximum zoom, 1,5km from the surface you will be riding on. It’s about as useful as an ashtray on a motorbike because holes large enough to swallow a well kitted Landcruiser are not even visible. Similarly, when viewing the profile of the 1076km route, a sheer rock face appears flat-ish. The race description sounds like it’s mostly on district road. Total ascent for the entire distance is just 7500m. You’d be forgiven for thinking this was a Sunday gravel grind. But it’s not. In a video clip recorded at 10 in the evening on day one, with just 200km under my belt I mutter: “…just to be clear: so much for district road. This night riding has been fraught with danger. Bloody aardvark holes in the middle of the night in the middle of the road. I’ve nearly bliksemmed into quite a few. We’re passing through farm land where road maintenance is not really a priority as all they do is drive around in 4x4 thingies, during the day. No-one really gives a damn about how mountain bikes would fare at night. There are rocky descents. There are holes in the middle of them. There are even cows in the middle of the holes in the middle of the rocky descents. Not manicured. If you were looking for tame district road it’s definitely not this race.” In another clip at 5am on Friday morning: “Hard going, again. There are so many ruts, and sand, and stones. I don’t know where he (Alex) gets them from.” There’s the brutally steep climb between water point 9 and water point 10 which takes you across the provincial border of the Northern Cape into the Western Cape. I walked most of it and everyone else I saw did some pushing. As you exit Fraserburg, thinking you can get some rhythm, there’s another detour into jeep and goat track. Same thing as you exit Van Der Kloof. When you can almost touch the Loxton church steeple the GPS veers off into a 20km detour of sand and stone and ruts. At every opportunity Alex takes you off the road you expect. As the kilometres roll by these purposeful excursions off the district road go from interesting to torturous. Throw in some darkness, a sprinkling of cold, and a drizzle of sleep deprivation and the risk of eating dirt increases faster than the petrol price. Sure, there are many kilometres on never-ending district road. Like the 48km climb from Tankwa Padstal to the Top of the Mountain in Ceres. Make no mistake though: riding a 2% gradient for 48km can be hard if you’ve warmed up for 936km. Even the flat portions of district road have their challenges. Remember the bastard wind along the the 93 kilometres into Fraserburg? There are Corrugations. Rocks. Sand. Then try all that at night. I have learned that the lower your light the longer the shadows the holes and corrugations cast, making them easier to see. But Sand? At night it’s almost impossible to spot sand. The result is that you never let go of the handlebars because you remember the last time you did – just for a second to grab your bottle: your front wheel makes a dash to the left, then the right. You choke on your tongue and pucker your arse like a Fish Eagle in a power-dive. So, you hold on all night, nearly dehydrating because you’re too afraid to drink, and, like Adrian Saffy, end up with nerve damage. In my case I had a slightly less severe version of nerve damage but, quite humorously for my kids, I couldn’t hold a piece of paper between my thumb and forefinger for about three weeks after the race. When a race is as long as The Munga it easy to see the terrain as simply something to overcome - on top of the cold, the distance, the heat, the wind, and your own limitations. When you’re in it though: a hole is a hole (ask the riders who abandoned after falling into an arrdvark hole on night one); sand is k*k, rocks can be terminal, and corrugations are simply evil. You don’t ride The Munga from google earth and close-up you’re always playing from the rough. GET OUT Kilometre 1028, Ceres. 8:35am, Sunday. Coasting into Ceres I had given up on completing my Munga in under four days. Broken, sleep deprived and hungry I had talked myself into sleeping at the RV for a few hours before tackling Baines Kloof pass. Just 47km and a mountain separated me from the finish. Philip Kleynhans was the lead at the RV and he knew from previous conversations that I wanted to complete it in four days. True to his riding pedigree and character he very simply, and not-so-politely, told me to get out of his race village. There may have been some swearing. Just 22 minutes, two bowls of oats, and a brace of Myprodols later my legs were turning. In that time, I re-negotiated a new deal with myself: I was going to go as hard as possible for the whole 47km, from the get-go - the consequences to my legs be damned. Those 47km took me ‘just’ 2h08. In my head I was on the Champs-Élysées one late July with only a TV crew in front of me. My Garmin tells me my normalised power output was 178W and my average speed was over 20kph. Astounding considering my pace and power just a few hours prior. On those 47km I was reminded that the human body is more capable than we believe, but the mind must be strong. And a Myprodol doesn’t hurt. KEEPING IT SIMPLE Like life, The Munga is complicated. The variables abound and are continuously changing. Its difficulty lies in no single element but rather in the combination of these elements. It is the alchemy of heat, cold, road surface, sheer distance and a compressed timeline that produces something harder than the sum of their individual difficulties. This combination is only found along that 1076km route towards the end of November each year. Counter-intuitively, the recipe for overcoming the complexity is simplicity itself. The sheer simplicity that all you must do is relentlessly turn each bastard pedal is both underwhelming and extraordinary at the same time. ‘Jy moet maar ry’ is about all you have to remember. The experience is unique and not easily replicable - riding through sunsets and sunrises; having a field spread out over 500km and not seeing a single light in every direction; fighting hallucinations from sleep deprivation; fighting with myself not to give up at the next water point, or to leave a warm water point at 3am and head out into the blackness. Pushing my bike on a flat road into a monster headwind and shedding a tear; falling asleep on my bike going downhill at 40kph into Ceres. You cannot train for these things. But you can open yourself up to test how deep you can dig when you need to. You can open yourself up to potential failure - and then marvel how you far you will go not to fail. How much pain you will endure to complete the task and to not let yourself and those that support you down. We live in an increasingly interconnected world where delegation of responsibility is easier than ever. The Munga is a reminder that in the end, you are in control of the outcome. You can write your own future. It was not fun. It was physically brutal. It was mentally torturous. Yet, my body healed, and my mind will remember what it needs to. I am left with a renewed belief that we can all do so much more that we think we can. With the right mental focus and physical preparation there is almost nothing that is out of our reach. It’s easy to think that this is a solo effort - it is not. Inspiration abounds when you open yourself up to it. When you look for it. When you need it. It’s in the other limping rider that's also got a busted knee; it’s in the smile of the farmers kids at 2 am; it’s in every sunrise and sunset; it’s in every rocky descent and in every tailwind. It’s in the lame joke and knowing smile. It’s even in the hallucinations. It’s being told by the RV lead to get out of his RV and ride, dammit, ride. It’s in the steam off your cup and the frost on your breath. It’s in the black of the night and the blue of the sky, the sky, the sky. And it’s in the phone calls to your wife and the voices of your family. While it may have been my feet attached to those bastard pedals the power to keep them turning came from Tam, Matteo and Gigi. In a voice note Tam sent me after she told me to harden up and ride my bike, the kids chanted "Remember what you tell us Dad, Gonzaga’s never give up". How could I possibly not live up to that? In case you thought this was just another race. This was at the start line facing the riders as we departed. The 12 pm start. The time of year. The loneliness. All designed to push you out of your comfort zone. Break you down. Only then can you rebuild into something new, something stronger. The wind was going to Loxton and we were going to Fraserburg. All day. Loxton to Fraserburg. Everyone is a warrior on the Munga. Adrian Saffy on the right - already standing from the saddle sores. Nicky Booyens on the left. Thinking I had fallen she stopped to wake me up on a downhill into Ceres. 1:30am. Alone. Cold. Broken. Desperate. Walking around my bike somewhere after Tankwa Padstal. This 45km took me five hours to negotiate. In the dark you can’t judge whether the road is going up or down. When your speed drops you imagine you’re climbing a monster hill. Then you consult the profile on your Garmin only to realise it’s a 1% incline. And swear a little. The route traverses some 70 private farms. The price you pay for the unique luxury is having to open and close a few gates. Ok… a lot of gates. This is the brown and blue of the Karoo: Windpomp, fences, gates, rocks, sand. Blue sky. The road out of the Sutherland race village. It is daunting when you see the next three or four hours laid out in front of you so clearly. Top of Ouberg Pass. Once you gird your loins and let go of the brakes you will shed 700m of altitude in just 7km. As an act of defiance to my battered knees I let my speedo touch 57kph. Waterpoint 3. I arrived here at about 4:50am, frozen to the bone. Bicycles strewn all over the lawn, but no people. Outside there was a table with a coffee machine and microwave on it. A fridge stood in attendance nearby. My fingers could barely open the microwave to put the mince vetkoek inside. I felt like pouring the hot Starbucks Coffee down my shirt. Inside, the scene was apocalyptic. People contorted into the small chairs, arms wrapped around themselves in some last gasp attempt to capture the last of their own warmth. Riders lying on the wooden floors, curled up like new-borns. Under tables, trying to escape the light. Broken-ness everywhere. I didn’t stay long. Munga miles are not for free. The swelling in my knees and ankle took two weeks to subside. Ola! I’ll bring the salt, you bring the tequila. 10 months of preparation. 7500km bashing pedals, some tears, some blood, some sweat. All reduced to the past and packed into a handmade piece of ironmongery. The future is not written.

feels like a trilogy in four parts... coming soon. I'm thinking of it like red wine...

As you know I made it - 3 days 23 hours. Physically and mentally busted, but nothing time and a few beers wont fix. It was a privilege to meet many of you on route and even more of privilege to have complete strangers rooting for me. Thank you. Taking a vacation from Thursday and need some time to pen an appropriate race report, which I will do - after all - my grandchildren will need proof! Avanti!

Mike Woolnough has added some really great advice on his blog - priceless stuff. http://mikewoolnough.blogspot.com/2018/11/munga-2018-art-of-power-napping.html

Yup, that would be me. No hiding now

#hellyeah. Are we there yet?!

Eyes like a hawk The leatherman is in my down tube with the kit for more serious issues. I carry the blade, 4 plugs, plug tool (whatever its actually called), bomb and inflator in the jerry can bag where i can access it without having to dismantle my bike.

Good point of view. I suppose that's the beauty of this pasttime. Almost all decisions are a tradeoff. There are very few cheaper solutions that will at the same time do the job faster at a higher quality. All they have to do is the mungas 1000km's without a puncture! I hope they do or its be BF Goodrich Mud terrains next time

What feeler gauge?

And you may have to be saved. Alone, a good enough reason.

At least we now know the two people that like the techinical stuff. Re. the bolts - the moering off is what i'm mitigating against.

I think bolts can sense when its a race and that's when they come undone. its'a mettalurgical thing. 6th senses aside - my tribars come loose all the time. I've just thought of it a very low opportunity cost with (in some cases) a very high potential penalty if they do. in my 5600km I havent had any of those bolts come loose, but hen again i have tightened everytning a few times. I asked Alex this and he said everything comes loose in the Munga. Hence my loctite eardrops. Good luck with your race - see you at the start.

Leatherman: broke my chain a month ago. Fixed it only to discover that I’d missed one jockey wheel when rethreading. Could break the chain with fingers again. Had to wait for a pair of pliers. Also that leatherman has a screwdriver, which means that with my multi tool plus two Allan keys the only things I can’t tighten are my pedals. That one weighs 149g and I have a smaller one which is about 116, but is much smaller by volume. Dropper post. Agree with you. I don’t plan on using it on the munga. I may change to a simple post but am need to be satisfied that nothing changed in my setup. Hadn’t thought about the weight though! Yup. Extra bolt plus collar. Also extra bolt for derailleur, one of the four for the brake assembly. One of the four for the stem two cleat screws and one of the four for the tri bars clamps.

Enjoyed putting my thoughts in permanent memory. For the bum cream - yup that's it. I didn't put it directly on the chamois as its quite thick and gets in there anyway. As you're probably read in other posts everyone gets chafe of some sort so it looks like it comes down to how much is bearable.

Thanks. I had similar questions when I first heard about the Munga a few years ago. What changed it for me is that i'm keen to find out how much mental fortitude I have. The Munga is a nice controlled (cough! splutter! BS!) environment to test that. See how many ordinary folks finish it this year and rethink.

Amen brother!!

Thanks - has been a fun journey so far. On the air resistance stuff - jeez - i've seen so much data, some of it at n3 and some at n2. My conclusion was that the n2 data referred only to drag and not the frontal force. At one point I think my eyes were bleeding. The best summary I found was here and also from Michael Hutchinsons book "Faster" - (which is great audio book BTW - helluva funny) . My education continues.

Munga musings from a novice. Part 3 of [probably 3] All the gear and no idea A decade ago I broke down on a dirt road in Kenya’s northern frontier. This road exits north out of a place called Marsabit in Kenya and winds its way through 250km of sandy corrugated hell before depositing its journeymen in the Ethiopian border town of Moyale. The cause of my unexpected and soon-to-be-very-expensive mishap was a blown rear shock absorber on my BMW GS1200. It was hot enough to cook a goat on; leaking like the Titanic and smoking like a recently lit PRASA train. Earlier in the trip we passed a weighbridge where my steed and I topped out the scale at 422kg. I tell this story because it may put my Munga equipment choices into some perspective. On the one hand I have a predisposition to catering for every eventuality while, on the other, I hope I now know better. I don’t think any subject matter in endurance cycling attracts more diverse opinions than the one of what should fill your bags. Hell – there isn’t even agreement on whether you should take bags with you at all. I have looked at so many pictures of blokes on bikes and bike set-ups that my wife has started checking my browser history. At the one extreme you have folks like Jeannie Dryer. If you don’t recognise her name, google her before you make a fool of yourself in cycling company. In 2016 she came second – overall - in one of those epic cycle races that reminded me of that Froome/Sagan breakaway in 2016, or Armstrong vs Ulrich after the knapsack caught his handlebars in 2003. The Stuff of Legend. She travels so light that when I saw a picture of her bike I felt sorry for her as she had clearly been the victim of a mugging on route and all her belongings stolen. Heck, her bike was even missing half its fork. When I asked some chaps what Alex Harris would take they jokingly replied, “an earbud”. With true attention to detail, it must be the hollow plastic type – doubling as a straw for shallow puddles of water in the Karoo. Look at photos of finishers of the Tour Divide and the Munga. It’s immediately evident that the quickest folks also have the least gear. Pondering this over your first glass of Pinotage you may conclude that the reason they can carry so little gear is because they’re the first into the showers at the finish. Slower riders simply cater for more time on the road, you conclude, packing you third pair of shorts into your seat bag. However, what if, after your third glass you wonder if the reason they’re first into the showers is because they carry so little. In excel, this would qualify as a circular formula. Betting and pain My first attempt at packing my bike saw the scales reach 28kg (the bare-bones bike with tri-bars is 13,9kg). When taking it for a ride it had the handling characteristics of a six pack of yogurt on a roller-skate. One way to approach this “what to take” dilemma is to get lists from people that have done similar events and simply see what fits in the bags you’ve bought. In fact, Alex provides a handy list that will probably get you through the Munga not wanting for much. However, if you’re like me and are looking in every nook and cranny for small gains to make up for large inexperience and moderate watts, then what to pack is, first, a question of principle. How much risk am I willing to take and how much discomfort am I willing to endure. For example, I asked my bike shop what spares I should take. Among others, they suggested I take a spare tyre. It’s probable that if I pitched up at the start with a tyre slung around my shoulder like an ammo belt in Rambo 182 I would get laughed off the start line. I am happy to live with the risk of not taking a spare tyre, but can I live with the risk of not taking a spare tube? One tube or two? A tube with slime or no slime? Old school rubber tube or those new lightweight orange tube thingies? I need a nap already, but it could be the wine. Unless you’re a politician there are no free lunches and decisions involve a trade-off of some sort. This packing dilemma is no different: carry too many answers to ‘what if?’ questions and I increase my weight, going slower, especially up the hills. On the plus side, the chances of a terminal breakdown are reduced as I have enough spares to rebuild my bike from the hubs up. Taking the second feedbag increases wind resistance, slowing me down. But at least I won’t starve to death and have a higher chance of finishing. Despite all the ‘keep it simple’ talk I imagine that those that travel light today, traveled heavy once before. To realise the benefit of getting rid of baggage you must have carried it once before. Colin Anderson (that guy that took an 87km wrong turn last year) has had to sew his tyre together with fishing line and a needle to prevent the tube from popping out. I really thought that only happened in movies with ex-bodybuilders as the lead actors. The real question to ask Colin is why the hell he thought that carrying fishing line and a needle was necessary in the first place. Was he perhaps hoping to ‘throw a line’ at some point? Then there’s the question of how much discomfort I am willing to endure. Two bibs or one? A second shirt? What will I sleep in? Arm and leg warmers as well as a base layer, making night riding a pleasure? Will you, like me, ride a full suspension bike on 3” rubber that eats corrugations for starters and doesn’t even cleanse the palate before eating sand roads for mains? My car seats are harder than the ride on my bike. At the risk of stating the obvious, this decision is highly personal - not in the Malusi Gigaba type of way, but I think you know what I mean. How much does money weigh? I seem to have distilled all the good advice I have received down to a few main objectives when it comes to how to think about gear choices: reduce weight, manage risk, reduce air resistance, and reduce complexity. I week or so ago I was out riding with two Munga veterans: Colin Anderson and Gavin Robinson. Both have completed a brace of Mungas and Freedom Challenges, among others. At some point Gavin was having some anger management issues with his pedals and I was struggling to keep up. To slow him down I started rambling, incoherently at first, about how he thought about equipment choices. Apparently (Colin had to eventually tell the story), Gavin talks to his equipment, asking one simple question: “what do you do for me?”. If the said piece of equipment has only one answer it goes in the bin. Gavin has even done this during races, shedding equipment as he goes. In Gavin’s world if you’re going to make the cut you need to have more than one use. By way of example: my space blanket is meant be useful to me in an emergency. It’s mandatory per the Munga rules. Gavin reckons its also good to use in the same way you would use newspaper down your shirt to keep the icy wind out when you descend Ouberg or Baineskloof. It’s also good to sit on: getting dirt and gravel in your chamois is not recommended unless you plan on standing most of the Munga. But best of all Gavin reckons that if you hold it above your head it will reflect sunlight and can be used in advanced search and rescue operations when you’ve had enough and are calling for your mom. So, for me at least, having never done an endurance event these seem to be the parameters around which I’ve made my choices: How much discomfort I am willing to endure; how much risk am I willing to take, and does it have multiple uses. Then, for each item, my journey went down weight loss boulevard and air resistance alley. At some point, which I am still busy with, I will make all of this less complicated. Jeez - this Munga stuff is exhausting. And this isn’t even the riding bit. Let me humour you, and you me, as I share some of my more recent discoveries about how gear choices impact cycling speed. What’s a fart worth? Somewhere in the dead of night I came across some research that indicated that the things that slow you down the most are air, gravity and your tyres. (Wine and whisky are still under review). Amazingly, for me at least, they are in that order of importance. Even on mountainous routes gravity still back ranks air resistance. This appears intuitive to most. For me this was new news that required some understanding. After all, if I was going to cycle the Munga in a cat-suit and a condom over my helmet I should know why. So here is what seems to be at play: when we cycle up a hill the effect of gravity is linear. That means that, considering no other factors, to go twice as fast up said hill, you will need twice the number of watts through those bastard pedals. This requirement stays the same regardless of the gradient. However, if you’re cruising nicely on a flat at 15km/h and want to go twice as fast, you will need eight times the power on those same bastard pedals to overcome the wind resistance. The power needed to overcome wind resistance and wind drag, increases more and more the faster you go. The same problem the guys at Bugatti had when they built the Veyron: it requires something like 500hp to get to 200mph and another 500hp to get to 250mph. “Not a problem” you say – “I never cycle at 30km/h”. What if, in what appears to be a quite likely scenario in the Munga, you’re trundling along at a 15km/h, turn the corner and find the wind is blowing into your front teeth at 15km/h? Well, mathematically, you would need twice the power just to stay at 15km/h. From trundle to trouble, with a capital F. Part of the reason why the power required is not double, like gravity, is that it’s not just the force of pushing through the air that you’re overcoming. As the air flows over your irregular (I’m not judging) shaped body and seat bag, it swirls about, causing a small pocket of air directly behind you that acts like a vacuum, sucking you backwards into it. This is called drag. You must overcome this drag in addition to pushing the air in front of you out the way. It’s like trying to push to the front at a rock concert – you’ve got to shove the people in front of you out the way, but as you pass them they try and grab you. In one of Alex’s adventures a group cycled from the top of Kilimanjaro (the mountain, not the song). Speaking to some of them, they all commented how fast they went. You see, at 6000m altitude there’s just not a lot of air to push through. Given the flattish profile of the Munga it looks like spending time on being less like a brick and more like an arrow seems to be effort well directed. Better directed than, for example, only taking half a fork. According to the chaps that run the wind tunnel at Specialized the difference between having pannier style bags and bike packing bags is a crazy 1.5km/h or 6 hours over the course of the Munga. Hydration? you’re better off carrying a six-pack in your backpack than on a rack right behind you. Want to rock some cool baggies and loose-fitting shirt? – that’ll cost you 2-odd hours in the Munga. The greatest clothing gains seem to be made from ditching the baggies, donning the five-xl race-cut gut-hugging shirt and squeezing into that toit-as-a-tiger jacket. Tri bars? If you only use the standard MTB position and your mate uses aero bars some of the time -you mate will be 8 hours into the beer by the time you arrive in Doolhof. Low carb for gear Having been told all my modest cycling career that ‘weight is everything’, I weighed everything. I mean everything. The tape under the tribar mounts. The additional links of a chain. I know the weight difference between different types of bottles and have debated the weight difference between polyshorts and a speedo, in the event I may like to swim during the Munga. I tossed my old rubber spare tube for a new-fangled orange Tubalito. Boom! Saved 183g. Bought a lightweight jacket - another 194g ‘saved’. And that’s not even considering the lesser volume and air resistance due to smaller packing requirements. If I take a spare bib it will ‘cost’ me 194g. Before you go out and splash 1 billion rand on those carbon seat rails and a Cannondale lefty here’s some food for thought, which I was happy to hear: Weight has a larger impact on more mountainous routes (not new news). Even then it is only significant going uphill on gradients above 4% (good news for the Munga). On the flip side you go slower down the hills! (I can live with that). But here’s the data that really focussed my mind as to whether I should empty my bank account in search of everything carbon; For every 1kg saved, I will improve my time over a (not flat) 100km course, by about 1 minute. Specifically, a 1kg saving over the Munga course will theoretically yield an 11-minute saving. Only 11 minutes. I did double check that. I have nonetheless continued to put my gear on a diet. The problem I have discovered is that my bike weighs 13,9kg and, unless I convert it to a unicycle, that is a difficult number to change. At the last weigh-in my bike, gear, and H20 was 24,4kg. That’s 10,5kg to play with. Of that 10,5kg, water is 3,7. If I include the very necessary containers that stop the water from spilling into the hot Karoo sand, that number increases to 4,7kg. Given that water seems to be important on the Munga I only have 5,8kg of stuff to work on reducing. A 2kg reduction, thereby gifting me 22minutes potentially, would require I shed nearly 35% of that weight. Seems like a tough ask to me. So, armed with this new information I have decided to pack my 3kg espresso machine with me – I figure I’ll easily make up the 33 minutes extra by staying awake longer. This doesn’t mean weight is not worth reducing. It’s just not the most important thing. If this data is even half right, and I have no reason to believe it’s not, better gains can be had by losing some of my own weight (which I’ve done lots of); changing my aerodynamics from that of small country cottage and changing my tyres. Why do tyres resist so much – aren’t they meant to roll? The effects of weight and air were intuitive, but I was not alive to the specifics. What was less intuitive in this journey of mine has been the effect of tyres. Specifically, how small decisions can steal watts quicker than a window washer in Sandton. My Stumpjumper has 27,5” rims and comes off the shelf with 3” wide black stuff. It’s got more grip on the gravel than some of our honourable ministers have on reality. Each tyre weights 1000g before the LBS has added Stans to each. Every person I’ve met asks me if they’re difficult to ‘turn’. Enough people asked me this question that I started to get a little anxious at not having a cogent answer. They didn’t ‘feel’ difficult to get up the hills. I started digging a little. Looking at rolling resistance data it looks like: the more air in the tyre, the less watts it takes to keep the tyre rolling. That sounds right. What I didn’t realise is that its about 4W-6W difference between 1.7bar and 3.8bar of pressure, with more watts required at lower pressure. That difference equates to needing 32% more power to keep a Continental Speedking turning. So, if you’re pushing 150W that’s 3% more watts required, per tyre. That’s an enormous time difference over the distance of the Munga. According the folks at Schwalbe this only applies on tar. The Munga isn’t on tar. Oops. Their view is that a tyre with a lower pressure can adapt better to bumps in the surface and sinks less when the surface is not sealed (like tar). The principle at play is that the more a tyre deflects the more energy it absorbs, instead of transferring that energy into forward motion. A very hard tyre will deflect more than a softer tyre. But here’s the real interesting discovery – wider tyres have less rolling resistance than narrower tyres. (I’ve included the explanation on this in a picture below). But wait… there’s more: you can run wider MTB tyres at much lower pressures than the equivalent 2.3” tyres. It’s a sort of two for the price of one deal: Wider tyres are better. Lower pressures are better. Wider tyres run at lower pressure. #hellyeah. My last 5600-odd kilometres have been done on 3” or 2,8” rubber at 0,8 to 1,1 bar. I’d like to say I knew when I chose this tyre size in February that it looks, on paper, to be perfect for the Munga. But I can’t – it was luck. I’ll take what I can get. You don’t enjoy the Munga At this point if you’re still reading you’re probably an A-type personality or having a *** day at work. I’ve heard many people say that this is OTT, OCD and even a “FFS – just ride your damn bike”. I’ll admit, none of these conclusions are untrue. I’m all the above and probably should just ride my damn bike. But I’m curious. I like to question ‘universal truths’ and ‘conventional wisdom’. In short, I like to understand why I do stuff. Perhaps in time I’ll be able to “just ride my bike”. For now, I am in love with the inspiration this crazy-ass Munga race has given me to learn more about a hobby I enjoy. I haven’t read this much in years, nor tried to understand mathematics and nutrition, nor the effects of training stress scores on my fatigue and form. What I have learnt is that despite appearing OCD this stuff does matter in endurance races. Tyre choice and pressure; aero bars and riding position; better fitting clothing and some understanding of the where and why I carry stuff on my bike, matter. When I spoke to Mike Woolnough those few weeks ago I got to talking about “how I plan to enjoy the ride”. He picked up a slice of focaccia, had a bite, and in a sort of hushed tone said something like “you don’t enjoy the Munga – its uncomfortable. It’s hard.” When I finish this years’ Munga I want to know I could not go one minute faster. I don’t want to regret spending an extra three hours at waterpoints or wondering why I stopped when I didn’t need to. I am sure my arse will hurt in my single bib, with no backup. I don’t want to pitch on the line and not have a view why I have 3” rubber at 1bar. I accept I will get much of this wrong, but I take responsibility for that. I plan on racing the Munga. Where I come relative to the other 149 competitors is inconsequential to me - as long as I leave everything inside of me on the dirt roads between Bloem and Paarl. The Munga does not start in Bloemfontein. It starts in those last waking hours of many nights. Those thoughts become etched into your eyelids slowly taking shape as you commit, pull out, recommit, ask permission, pull out, swear a little, pull out one last time, and finally, commit. Alex maps out 1100km of the journey. The rest of the journey is up to you. T.E. Lawrence didn’t have the Munga in mind, but he may as well have: “All men dream, but not equally. Those who dream by night in the dusty recesses of their minds, wake in the day to find that it was vanity: but the dreamers of the day are dangerous men, for they may act on their dreams with open eyes, to make them possible” For those who I’ll see on the 28th November, at noon, we will be the dreamers of the day. Avanti! That’s an Arkel seat bag with frame. Weighs 661g. The bag on top of the seat bag is a 2L camelback bladder in an insulated bladder bag with a pipe than runs along the top tube and appears between the tri-bars. The Bedrock bag on the bottom of the down tube holds a 1l bottle. Bag and bottle are a bit heavy at 411g. The only upside is that the bag keeps it colder for about 6 minutes longer and I don’t have to wipe the cow dung off it before drinking. There are two Revelate feed bags on the bars. I’m not sure what will end up in there just yet. At 65g each they’re light but probably not great for wind resistance. Have my Garmin 800 and an iPhone (not in picture) for music and to record myself in general states of hysteria while riding. A 22000mah battery pack will keep my iPhone and Garmin charged the entire Munga. Not having to take anything off my bike to charge at charging stations keeps things much simpler. Also, less chance of forgetting the things behind. The tri bars are Red Shift, from the great chaps at Gravel and Tour. If you haven’t ridden tri-bars (like I hadn’t) prepare for pain until your body gets used to it. Transact patches for your shoulders should come with the tri-bars. The spares I’m taking. The only thing not there are some extra bolts, a cleat and screws and the rubber O-ring that keeps my light and Garmin on. These all fit inside my down tube and weigh 745g. Given the lack of gnarly descents my Specialized Butchers will miss the trip to Cape Town. These Rocket Rons have a great mix of puncture resistance and very very low rolling resistance due to the tread pattern. I have tested one set for 2900km to date and had zero sealant leakage and had to plug 5 or so punctures, with no more required than just jamming the plug in. In my search for weight gains I did weigh a flip flop with a cleat. Weight is better, but heel support was lacking. Didn’t make the cut. After permission to release the mixture formula its: squeeze the tube of nipple cream and the bactroban (supiroban generic) in the tub. Mix well. Apply to body. I haven't had a need to apply directly to the chamois. The Anethane is for when you're getting into emergency territory as its a topical anesthetic. From the Schwalbe website. The most cogent explanation I found around wide tyres and their rolling resistance. This happened to confirm what Alex spent much time trying to explain to me. Apologies for arguing with you Alex. Below are some links to data sources: Links to air resistance https://ridefar.info/bike/cycling-speed/air-resistance-bike/ https://www.sheldonbrown.com/brandt/wind.html https://www.exploratorium.edu/cycling/aerodynamics1.html Links to rolling resistance https://www.researchgate.net/publication/279323381_Comparison_of_tyre_rolling_resistance_for_different_mountain_bike_tyre_diameters_and_surface_conditions https://www.schwalbetires.com/tech_info/rolling_resistance Rolling resistances of different tyres https://www.bicyclerollingresistance.com/mtb-reviews

I think I'm getting to this conclusion. Must admit though that i enjoying "sciencing the sh*t out of stuff - and then once that's done following my gut. as for eating... now that's another OCD post. Thanks for the advice.

Yup - the overthinking ship sailed with me on it way back...

Simplicity. Clarity. Inspiration. IMO these are worthy pursuits and appear applicable across almost all subject matter. So yes - I'm looking forward to what I'll learn in the suffering and the solitude. Whether it will solve a worldly problem or just make me more appreciative of a well made gin & tonic, I don't know. I'd be comfortable with either outcome though.

i haven't even done the actual event yet and its inspired me more than I could have imagined.

in the next post...

Nice to see your back at your keyboard. To get advice (versus my musings) see Mikes blog at http://mikewoolnough.blogspot.com/

I think I get it now. Thanks.