Stu Spies is a London based mountain bike, road and cyclocross habitual racer. The pendulum has swung towards all things Marathon Mountain Biking, and he is riding for the MarathonMTB.com-Repack Team in South Africa.
Well its been a full month, I’m gearing up for my first Ultra of the year, Barberton, and as is the case for everyone, wondering if I’ve done enough. So it’s time for a little retrospective review methinks?
Being home is always a special time for me, the ‘detached family’ syndrome is not unique to South Africans but probably a lot more prevalent in recent years. We all live everywhere ELSE basically! The positive spin-off to this is that travel is paramount; positive if you like travel of course. My year therefore is fluid to some degree, and equally earning money to do this has had to be fluid too. I can honestly say its not always easy or convenient but if you want to make it happen, it happens. No better example than our own intrepid Mike Blewitt and fellow Australian Subaru-MarathonMTB.com Team mates. We’re no rock stars, every trip requires some serious sacrifices and commitments but oddly enough, turning up to a race in Germany and seeing the same faces you did in London, Austria, Switzerland or Italy feels normal and reassuring. You are doing whats normal and right for you, basically!
So Jozi, she’s an interesting beast, large and growing, beautiful and edgy, calm on the surface with trouble down below. No sooner are you lulled into a false sense of security than something dramatic and unspeakable happens on your doorstep. One thing is certain, a Jo’burger never relaxes! For cyclists Johannesburg offers immense fun and excitement. Unfortunately the spate of violent bike ‘jackings’ and insane lack of accountability on the roads means riders have had to arm themselves, literally and mentally. Riders I meet are relaxed for the most part, telling you casually ‘oh you rode the Alrode route, I got chased by a guy with an axe there last week *chuckle*’. You have to question the sanity!
For me I feel heart-broken some days remembering how it ‘used to be’ but the truth is Africa is Africa, this is how it is. My Sunday ride was a perfect encapsulation of this ramble. As I head out from my mums house at 1600m above sea level an odd thought occurs ‘this is higher than Innsbruck’ yet the sprawling suburban landscape is a world apart from the Austrian ski hotspot. I climb the ridge that used to overlook the mine dumps, now industrial mega warehouses dot the landscape. Topping out at 1780m you really don’t feel a noticeable difference but it is not the altitude but the heat that gets you. Slow climbing is met with blazing sunshine and literally zero breeze.
From Edenvale I make my way to Primrose Hill, followed by Fishers Hill and finally I run the ridge into the affluent neighborhood of Bedfordview and then into Kensington the oldest and biggest neighborhood still clinging to some of our colonial past. The whole time I’m fighting small sharp climbs then sailing downhill, an undulating tentacle heading to the heart of the city. On the 29’er I’m simply loving the dirt tracks that litter every street and patch of veld (field). These are the unstructured walking highways that have been forged by hundreds of thousands of workers heading to and from the informal settlements into the suburban cash cow of the city.
My first shock, Ellis Park, never known for splendor it does however house our hallowed World Cup Winning Rugby stadium and world class athletics stadium. The money that has saturated the turf seems to end right at the boundary fence because the surrounding neighborhood is light years from the comparative opulence of the people turning up for a Saturday event. The houses crumble, the sewage spills into the street, children in dirty nappies run un-chaperoned next to busy arterial roads, a new reality.
I realise I’ve messed up, I hit the gas and aim for Berea, traditionally a strong sense of community in what used to be a predominantly Jewish area, the entry point is the overflow from Hillbrow the first neighborhood to suffer dramatically under the new governments calous attitude to structured development, border controls and crime. This was my second shock, a lycra clad idiot darting for the exit! The neat open gardens now replaced with palacade fencing, street pill boxes for security guards, 24 hour surveillance and the fear of those holding out against a wave of decay.
Remarkably no sooner have I left Berea I’m staring at the splendour of our historic mansions that mark the start of the ‘Spruit’ our term for the tiny river running from Melville koppie (hill) through the green lanes of Sandton and beyond. Sanctity! I relax, oh wait they’ve moved the entrance, a spiked fence my first obstacle, combat cycling! The Spruit is phenomenal, two hardpack lanes the feature of most Jo’burg based riders Saturday morning. On Sundays most people seem to be lapping up the sunshine at the braai rather than slogging on their MTB though.
Free to hammer from the top of Melville unhindered and unchecked right to the base of Sandton, the new city, where wealth and power drip like honey from the multinationals and banks and ooze into the surrounding houses. Mmm this is where my sister lives. An afternoon enjoying the buzz and madness that is family I eventually head off back to base. On getting home I do what most Jo’burgers do strangely, text to say I’m home OK, yep we all do it. My sister calls: odd. ‘Stu five minutes after you left four armed men broke into next door, beat the father up, kicked the dogs, traumatised the children, demanded the safe and made off in less time than it takes to make a sandwich’. Horror, disappointment, fear, you can’t let ‘them’ get to you, but this is how it is in Jozi.
View Stu’s ride on Garmin Connect