As a South African Airways pilot, Tim James is used to doing the distance between Durban and Cape Town in about two hours. He has just finished this distance in 14 days and 12 hours by bike — mountain bike, to be precise.
It is probably fair to say that if you wanted to cycle between these two centres along the N2 on a racing bike at 200km a day, you’d complete the 1 600km in eight days, Tour de France-style.
But James was riding the Freedom Challenge, a continuous trail through the most remote and least-visited parts of the country. The cumulative ascent tops 40 000m, four times the vertical distance from sea level to the top of Everest.
James sliced nearly two full days off the record of the five-year-old event, averaging more than 150km a day for the 2 345km.
He managed this by cycling late into the night when most of the other 22 competitors were resting or sleeping. At one stretch near the end he completed 290km in a 21-hour period, eventually only stopping to sleep when he broke a derailleur and was reduced to a single gear.
With 700km to go, he left Willowmore in the Karoo and cycled for 84 hours, sleeping for just 12 hours until he reached the finish at Paarl.
”His achievement is phenomenal,” says race director and founder David Waddilove. ”The bar has been set at a level which could take some years before it is bettered.”
The race started the day after the Comrades Marathon in Pietermaritzburg. On the first day James surprised the whole field by riding two stages in one, a distance of more than 200km and an ascent of 5 000m. Most race watchers thought this was too hard a task. The consensus was that no rider would attempt a double.
Waddilove says James’s ride is ”close to perfect, with very few errors”.
James says that he began the ride with a 12-day plan, but bad weather on the first few days (there were floods in southern KwaZulu-Natal) made conditions wet and muddy and slowed progress.
He had planned to make Rhodes, near Tiffendell, in three days, but arrived in three-and-a-half, pushing on that night to the farm of Doukrans, about 60km further on. The area was uncharacteristically wet for the time of year, with the rivers in spate and the track wet and slippery.
Around midnight James hit a river crossing only to find that the cement base had been washed away. ”I fell hard over the wheels, ending up sopping wet and cold.”
In previous years the leading riders have left very early in the morning to make up distance. James decided against this as it is the coldest part of the day (the coldest temperature he recorded was minus five degrees).
Navigation at night, particularly through the numerous portage sections, can be difficult and a few riders this year spent bitterly cold nights out after getting lost.
James spent only one night out. He was coming up Die Leer, the famed near-vertical donkey track that leads out of Die Hel (or Gamkaskloof), when he broke his rear derailleur at 2am. Rather than waste time trying to fix it in the dark, he put on all his clothes and space blankets and slept.
He was in an area that has no cellphone reception, but in the morning he managed to give a short note to a farmer who phoned the race organisers to report what had happened.
James made it on one gear to Montagu, 180km down the road, where a new derailleur had been brought in. He figured, though, that it would take an hour to make the repair, so opted rather to continue with the single gear.
Steve Thomas, who completed the event last year, waited for James at Brandvlei prison, about 20km from the last support station at Trouthaven. He says the slight figure of James appeared from the mist. ”He looked tired, but mentally was very strong and was obviously on a complete high. It seemed that he could carry on forever.”
Of the 23 starters, 18 had either finished or were making their way to the finish and were set to complete the ride within the 26-day cut-off, even as the back markers were battered for days by the rain and snow that caused havoc in the Western Cape.
The 18 included Ian Waddilove, brother of David and Rob, who completed the first ride. Di Thomas, wife of Steve, was also heading for the finish, making them the first husband-and-wife combo to earn the Basotho blanket given to all finishers.
Hennie de Clerque, aged a little over 60, became the oldest finisher to date.
I had one more question for James: Why? He says the event and the way it links together a set of trails across the country caught his attention and imagination and ”assumed a huge part of [his] life”.
”For three or four months before [it was] all I thought about. I really, really enjoyed the ride. Every day I was in heaven.”