2014 Absa Cape Epic review and wrap-up

2014 Cape Epic review

A big adventure

What an adventure. For a very small minority of the participants, the Absa Cape Epic is a race, pure and simple. Nino Schurter, Jose Hermida, Rudi van Houts, Christoph Sauser – those guys are all racing, throwing it down every day for eight days, sprinting for stage wins, attacking each other in breakaways, and spraying champagne on the podium. But for most of the other 1150 or so, it’s a glorious, life-enhancing adventure.

And it’s a journey too. Here’s how the journey goes over eight days of the Absa Cape Epic.

The Prologue: pretty much anyone who can ride a mountain bike can ride 23km on fun trails. And this year, for the first time in Epic history, in 2014 everyone made it – there wasn’t a single drop-out after the Prologue. It’s a quick blast, somewhere between one and two hours; this time it wasn’t even that hot. And it takes place in a lovely spot – the wine estate of Meerendal, near Durbanville, 30km from central Cape Town. The main challenge for the faster riders, at least those who aren’t UCI registered so don’t start at the end, is overtaking those who are slower than them; with such a big field (600 pairs), teams start at 25 second intervals, meaning that there are lots of people on course; and there is a lot of singletrack.

Stage 1: After the short introduction of the Prologue, stage 1 always comes as a bit of a shock. The course designer at the Epic, “Dr Evil”, always starts the riders off with a rude awakening. This time it was over 110km, with plenty of climbing. It also always starts fast and aggressive – no one’s legs are tired yet, and they’re all excited to race. So some people always take the kind of daft risks that they wouldn’t do later in the week, and the peloton can feel a bit dangerous for the first few km until the first proper climb stretches the field out. This was also a day for lots of mechanical problems, from the amateur teams right through to the professionals.

Stage 2: It is over the first one or two stages that riders will really find out how well their team works, if they didn’t already know. Even if you’ve ridden with someone on plenty of club or social rides, how you work together over five hours a day of pushing yourself to your limits can still come as a surprise. In the early stages, you find out who is the strongest, and on what terrain; how well each team member responds to suffering over a long day; and who can maintain a sense of humour after the third puncture of the day. This can be taken to extremes – for example, this year a French rider was heard to be advertising for a new team-mate two days before the race. His teammate had been coming from Argentina, but was turned away from the airport due to not having the right vaccinations. He found himself with a South African teammate, not only someone he had never met, but someone with whom he did not even share a language! The eight days would have been a real voyage of discovery for those two.

This year stage 2 was also the time for the weather to throw a curve ball at the riders. Particularly for those travelling to the Cape Epic from the northern hemisphere, the expectation is for sunshine and dust. And indeed on some years, that is what you get for eight days; your main problem is staying hydrated and not overheating on the warmest days under the African sun. But this time it rained, and did so properly. The stage was a mudfest for everyone; worse for those nearer the back of the field, since the rain had eased by later in the day, but the mud had dried slightly to a sticky consistency, and been churned up by hundreds of other racers, plus all the camera motorbikes.

This is just one of the ways that the Epic can surprise you. This should have been a relatively easy day, with fairly little climbing, and not one of the longest in terms of distance. But it turned into one of the toughest.

Stage 3: this year stage 3 was the longest in terms of km, at 134. That’s a long way on a mountain bike even if you weren’t in the middle of an eight-day long race. But again the Epic can test you beyond simply what the route profile says. The wind made this day a really tough one, with strong headwinds for large parts of the last 30-40km. A long day in the saddle for many, to arrive at a first-time Cape Epic stage location, Greyton.

Stage 4: After the tough challenges of the two preceding days, Stage 4 this year was hugely enjoyable for most riders. It had everything: amazing scenery, decent weather, and fantastic trails. After a tough switchback climb, which had one rider break a wrist from a steep fall after having failed to make a turn, and also saw one of the pros, Kevin Evans, penalised for cutting a corner while being recorded on the rider behind’s GoPro (doh!), there was one of the most memorable pieces of singletrack I can remember riding for a long time. It seemed to go on for ever, a truly “single” track through low-lying green vegetation, following a ridgeline. A real treat.

Stage 5: this was the queen stage of this year’s race, at over 100km and with almost 3000m of climbing. Normally, you would have expected the riders to have been building towards this for a couple of days. But my sense was that Stages 2 and 3 were so tough that many riders were struggling to think much more than a day ahead, and were really tired before the queen stage even started. It involved two big climbs, one of which offered probably the most surreal sight and sound of this year’s race: on the tough, sandy Groenlandberg climb, there was what looked like a giant tramp’s tent halfway up, with the sound of loud opera coming from it. If you were suffering up the climb, you might not have even noticed, but that music was being sung live by a woman standing at the top of the structure, which I think was meant to be her dress.

Stage 6: In this year’s race, the stages all had a very different character. Stage 6 was definitely the singletrack stage, described by the race director as the “reward” for the hard stage the day before. The local mountain bikers have built quite an extensive network of singletrack around the race village of Oak Valley, and unlike some of the “transition” stages, this stage wove its way around a fairly compact area, taking in all the best trails. One of the effects of this was that spectators were able to get to several points on the course. When you’re riding, you have little sense of where you are. Just follow the arrows! But it was a pleasure to have such a dense crowd on so many of the sections.

One of the nice things to see on this stage was the Outcasts all riding together. The Outcasts are UCI-registered riders who have lost their teammate; and by the second-last day, there are a few of these – riders dropping out with injury or illness. And the race organisers give the Outcasts special jerseys to show their status, and to help ensure that they do not affect the outcome of the race. It was a select group, just having fun and riding together, including Jose Hermida, Urs Huber and Lukas Buchli.

Stage 7: And so the last day arrives. Already on the morning of the last day there’s a sense of euphoria in the camp. The race organisers even give everyone an extra hour in bed. But it’s a mistake to relax too soon; there’s still a tough stage to be ridden. In some years, the final day has been very short – last year only around 50km. But this year there was still 67km to be ridden, including a solid 1800m of climbing. The temptation can be to switch off the brain and imagine it’s all over already; but that’s dangerous – there was still a solid day in the saddle to be ridden, including some tricky rainy conditions, especially early on.

Lourensford wine estate is a truly special place to finish a bike race. It’s a green bowl surrounded on three sides by hills and mountains, and the course takes the long way round the finish arena, with a wall of cheering supporters encouraging the riders into the finish. For many riders, the adventure, and the journey from Meerendal eight days before will have been one of the toughest things they have ever done. In particular, think of some of the slower riders; the professionals start their race at 7am and are done every day by 12, or 1pm at the latest, and being looked after by their soigneurs, and their bikes taken care of by the team mechanics. But for some of the back markers the longest days last well into the afternoon, from which point they have to sort out their bikes, eat, rest, get fresh kit for the morning, and get to bed in time to get up at 5am and do it all again. So getting to Lourensford is a massive achievement for everyone who makes it there.

And because of all that effort, the finish itself is an emotional place. There are tears; there are big smiles; there is jubilation; and this year again there was at least one proposal of marriage.

The people

The Absa Cape Epic is special because of the scenery; it’s special because of the professionalism of the event – the flawless organisation and great atmosphere; but in particular it’s special because of the people you meet along the way. It’s a real privilege for the amateur riders to be able to share a start-line with some of the greatest riders in the sport – Sauser, Schurter, Hermida, Platt, to name just a few. It’s also a privilege for the international riders to be made so welcome by the locals, whether that’s the people working for the event, those many South Africans who volunteer, and spend their week, unpaid, massaging riders, serving riders coffee, hosting journalists, or whatever it might be; or the many people who line the route and cheer the riders on – the schoolkids by the side of the road; the guys working in the vineyards who look up from their tractors as you pass, or the town dwellers who put on a real show when the race sweeps through their main street.

Then there are all the other teams that you meet along the way. You find that you see the same people all week – those who have a similar physiology and a similar power to weight ratio. It’s hard not to make friends with at least some of these folks.

And then there’s your teammate. There’s a strong bond formed between friends (or sometimes even couples) who do the Absa Cape Epic. There will have been tough times along the way, when one teammate got the other through a tough day, whether with a good line in jokes, or a push up a tough climb, or assistance with a tricky mechanical issue. And those are shared experiences that you will always have, and always remember.

Now that it’s over

A good friend of mine, who has done the Cape Epic, plus many other great races, said that no other race would ever feel quite the same once he had done the Epic. Where are the crowds? Where are the schoolkids taking the morning out of class to hold out their hands, hoping for a high five? Where are the helicopters? Where is the peloton containing the capos of the sport?

When the adventure is over, there is a brief period when you’re just glad. The body is definitely glad of the break. At eight days, the Cape Epic lasts longer than the gaps between most of the rest days in road Grand Tours. So with some downtime, the body takes the chance to repair itself, and on day one it is a relief to be in a bed, without having to be in the start chute by 6:30am. But it doesn’t take long before that well-known syndrome, Post Stage Race Depression, sets in. Or at least Stage Race Withdrawal. You miss the glorious routine of just getting up, eating, riding your bike, eating some more, eating even more, sleeping, and then doing it all again, all with 1,200 other likeminded people and through absolutely incredible scenery.

People are often interested in how the Epic compares to other races around the world. All I know is that it should be on your list – nothing else quite matches up for the sense of being part of something BIG, in terms of the challenge, the event, the media storm, or numerous other aspects.