When Greg first invited me to come out to South Africa and do a 250K off road stage race with him I didn’t really think much about how to prepare.
It especially didn’t help when my bags didn’t turn up at the airport, I flew into Pietermaritzburg airport, Greg picked me up we called at his house then left for a 1 hr drive out to Underberg where the start of the race is. Greg arranged a bike for me to borrow for the first day, it was a huge rigid rear frame called the black taxi kindly donated to me by Sam Knox a local legend who made us drink lots of wine the night before the first big day. I also had to borrow Greg’s riding gear/Shoes/Helmet/socks; the only thing had of my own was a pair of Smith glasses.

Day 1
Day 2
Day 3

Anyone wanting to do this event for next year (highly recommended) should keep an eye out on www.sani2c.co.za website as entries fill up fast.

All Pictures property of Gary Perkin (Flipper)

The starts of these races are so early cos the Sun gets too hot during the day so its nice to get finished early too. First day we Started at 6am and were finished at 9.30am. I didn’t expect us to go at such a pace right from the get go, But Greg had done the race before and he knew what we had to do. I was amazed at how good the trails were and more importantly how much effort the local people had put in to make wicked single-track sections, all in all I think there was around 22k of single track in day one. Me and Greg were ripping on the Downhill’s and picking people off fast, then we came around a corner and some roadie with no skills got in Greg’s way, he ended up missing a small bridge and landing on his head in a ditch with his bike on top of him. Once I realised he was ok I pulled over and laughed my (his) sock’s off.

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As today is the longest day we had to get up at 4am so we could get fuelled up before the 5 o clock start, we actually sat on the line waiting for it to be light enough to go. Greg and I had made it into A batch from day 1 so the start pace was fast, I hung with them all the way to the first little rd climb (2K if that) then went backwards, all I was thinking was why did we go to the bar and this is going to be a long day!!

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Feeling a lot fresher and not as hung over and also a later start time, everything was looking good for today’s shorter stage. After my appalling performance yesterday we had been demoted to batch B for the start, we soon hit the front and started making places up, at one point we must have made it up to half way through Batch A. There was a couple of big climbs where we lost places but soon made up for on the flats and Downhill’s, The highlight of the whole event was when a pack of Wild Zebra’s popped out in front of us on a fire road in the game reserve , we managed to follow them for a few hundred meters until they shot off in to the deep bush and flattened anything that was in there way. What an awesome experience!!

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