Ok, so I changed my alarm ringtone last night to George McCrae’s classic hit from the 70’s ‘Rock Your Baby’ in order to be woken with something a little less explosive, as I had set my wake-up time at 5.50am. It was a much more pleasant way to be woken than Nickelback’s crash and burn stuff. I took a few minutes to yawn and stretch before checking that all limbs were still attached and working. Apart from the occasional creak emanating from a knee joint everything appeared to be doing what it should.

So I got ready and left home at 6.27am to be exact with a view to meeting Hoosain and Omar in Claremont at 7am. Weather was good, wind was blowing and helping me to get to my meeting. It was cold and I was wearing the short-sleeved top without arm warmers but I did remember the gloves this time! So my hands were nice and warm but my legs and arms were cold. I knew it would warm up later, so I took the chance of leaving the warm stuff behind not wanting to carry it in my pockets on the way back. Well it took a very long time to warm up as the wind was cold and it blew that whole day, but I was comfortable after a few minutes when the blood eventually woke up and agreed to feed my muscles.

I knew we were in for something of an epic ride in that we were heading to Taal Monument in Paarl and back home. What could possess grown men to even contemplate such a daft idea? The fact that the biggest secret in the Cape Town cycling fraternity had been leaked to us was what did it.

Our next Virgin Active Pro Classic Series league ride is scheduled for Saturday 24th October and is simply listed as hillclimb without any further information to illuminate the riders as to their fate on that day! We have queried this and been awarded with: “All will be revealed at a later stage”! Great, I love a mystery as much as the next guy, but can we please be told where we will be depositing our breakfasts by the side of the road, so we can at least prepare our seconds for the mopping up operations?

This mystery event has been the only thing more talked about by all the riders than Enzo Lezzi’s official finishing position in the last event! So we got the inside scoop from a well-established Elite rider in the club and immediately made plans to tackle the dreaded Taal Monument climb. We had heard of the difficulty of this climb and that it transcended anything else Cape Town had to offer. The steepest section is rumoured at a 12% gradient, while Suikerbossie measures a miserly 6% and parts of Price Drive in Constantia a respectable 10%.

We were of course elated that only we had the vital information for the next event and could now take full advantage of this by preparing ourselves properly. Now the sensible thing would have been to drive to Paarl by car and do the climb on the bike, ride back to the bottom, ride the climb again and then maybe even a third time if you weren’t feeling sickly enough by then. That way you would get more experience of the climb and would have a better understanding of it for race day. Oh no, but not for us any of that easy stuff!

So we had prepared for a long day on the bikes, figuring that we would end up riding about 130kms or so. We were not quite prepared for the length of day we ended up with – 195kms! All riders’ names that were responsible for this debacle will of course be kept anonymous, Hoosain!

We had to contend with the early morning traffic in the form of huge transport trucks and of course the commuters getting to work. It was busy, but the biggest problem was not the number of cars and trucks but rather the exhaust fumes, mostly diesel! Things improved for a while just outside Stellenbosch where the air is clean, pure and fresh! We rode hard up the Old Helshoogte Road and took it easy on the way down into Pniel. The road through Pniel all the way to the T-junction to Paarl / Franschoek is undergoing serious maintenance work and there were a few hairy moments when I almost took early retirement by colliding with the chevron signs warning of road works! It’s about time that road is re-surfaced; the potholes had me airborne and searching for a soft landing on a number of occasions.

Once we had navigated that section safely it was onto the road leading to Paarl and we flew along here as the wind was blowing from behind. Soon we had the Taal Monument in sight and it was quite a daunting one at that. Standing majestically on Paarl Rock it looked miles above us! We had worked hard and decided to take a stop at a local café for refreshments before approaching the climb.

That was not the best idea either as we had now cooled down and the climbing starts pretty much immediately from the Main Rd in Paarl. The climb itself was not as tough as I had imagined and I got the jump on Hoosain as the road flattened about half-way up when he took a sip from his water bottle while I was focusing on gaining some momentum for the steepest section of the climb leading to the boom and pay point. No question that it will be tough if this does turn out to be the hillclimb and you are on it giving everything. Any climb or race will be tough when you are at your limit and it will be the rider who is in the best condition and can endure the pain the longest that will win! Bring on the pain, I say!

On a rather funny note, it seemed as if the secret was no secret at all as on the climb we saw a number of cyclists doing exactly what were doing. We were probably the last to find out!

The rest of our epic ride turned quite painful rather quickly when we decided - as a group, no blame will be allocated to anyone – that we could find Bottelary Rd along the R44 heading towards Wellington! We eventually came to our senses when Omar rightly pointed out that we had now gone about 15km along the R44 without any sign of Bottelary Rd! We duly turned and slogged our way into the wind back along the R44 into Stellenbosch and made our way back home the same we had gotten there. Things were pretty quiet on the way home as we were all tired and just wanted to see familiar vistas again!

The ride took me 6hrs and 30min and I covered 195km at an average of 29.9km/h. I am now physically exhausted and having eaten a healthy bowl of pasta and showered I am heading for my inviting bed where I will hopefully experience the thrill of victory on Taal Monument! If you gonna dream, dream big, right!

Check the ride on Nokia's Sports Tracker site:

http://sportstracker.nokia.com/nts/workoutdetail/index.do?id=1644316

Charles Ekström