These days ‘Mr Cycle Tour’ prefers a run

David Bellairs and his partner Nicky Eckstein are raising R50 000 in the Unogwaja Challenge, which involves cycling from Cape Town to KwaZulu-Natal. Dave will then run the Comrades Marathon. Picture: David Ritchie

David Bellairs and his partner Nicky Eckstein are raising R50 000 in the Unogwaja Challenge, which involves cycling from Cape Town to KwaZulu-Natal. Dave will then run the Comrades Marathon. Picture: David Ritchie

Published Mar 6, 2015

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Cape Town - Sitting on a bicycle for hundreds of kilometres is all about balance. But it took “Mr Cycle Tour” David Bellairs 20 years to find that balance, he admits.

These days you’re most likely to find him pounding the tar on a run during his free time and not so much on a bicycle.

It’s his way of combining two of his newly-found loves – running and his partner Nicky Eckstein (but more about the latter later).

Dave, the director of the Cape Town Cycle Tour, is quite possibly the busiest man in the city. He has to ensure that 35 000 cyclists get through the starting chute on race day and looks after logistics for the rest of the day. Then there’s the events around LifeCycle Week – the MTB Challenge, Junior and Tricycle Tours and the LifeCycle Expo.

The Monday after race day, Dave, 52, and his team get right into the planning for the following year’s event.

He has been involved in the organisation of the event since 1991 and doesn’t miss riding it because he gets a bigger kick seeing the jubilation on the faces of the thousands who ride the Cycle Tour. His life for most of the more than two decades he has run the event was frenetic, fast-paced, chaotic.

But five years ago a crossroads in his personal life forced him to take a stock.

“My life changed when I got divorced after my second marriage and I took a step back and kind of re-assessed who I was, what I was doing and where I was going.

“The biggest thing is that you have to be comfortable about yourself and I think for many years I’ve never been comfortable with me.

“After I got divorced, I spent a lot of time introspecting. Four years ago, I met my partner Nicky and she was an avid runner. And for 20-odd years I was an avid cyclist. So we’re both keen sportspeople. We travelled similar life paths… she’s also been married twice with two kids and we’re both into sports.

“Nicky is a very socially-orientated person in terms of giving. I had always been heavily involved in the Cycle Tour which was about giving. But in my personal life, and this was part of that reassessment of my life, what was I doing? I adopted a lot of her philosophy – if I was going to do something, I needed to do it for the betterment of others.”

The turning point was in November 2011 when a friend gave him a birthday card that read: “Life begins at the end of your comfort zone”.

“That became my mantra. Nicky had just come back from running a 250km trail in Nepal, called Racing the Planet, where it was a personal journey for her and she decided to use the event to raise money for Operation Smile (which funds reconstructive surgery for kids with cleft palates).

“By my 50th birthday I wasn’t a runner, I was a cyclist, so I decided to step out of my comfort zone. We entered an event for 2013 which was going to be my introduction to running: a 250km self-supported trail run through Iceland and we were going to do it together as a couple. I started running and it became my purpose – with my cycling, balancing that – and once we paid our entry fee we used the opportunity to raise money for the Smile Foundation.

“I have a huge amount of respect for the Ackerman family (of Pick n Pay) and I know Suzanne (Ackerman-Berman) happened to be one of the board members of the Smile Foundation and I decided I would give back to them. They’ve always been giving.

“It was doing a number of things: it was satisfying my need to live beyond the comfort zone and doing something that was challenging my own boundaries. At the same time it allowed me to give back to the community in some way.

“It wasn’t just a selfish journey. It needed to be a selfless journey. It was about me but it was about doing something else. It was an amazing experience.”

Dave and Nicky ran in sub-zero temperatures, in winter kits and carrying 15kg each on their backs with all the food, clothing, sleeping gear and medical equipment they needed for the six-day adventure.

“We did four marathons, an ultra marathon and then a little 10km run on the finish. So there’s this amazing sense of achievement having finished it, which is the personal thing. Then there’s the incredible sense of giving, around the money being used for the Smile Foundation. We came back and we literally turned around and thought: now what?”

Then they tackled a four-day 100km run through the Richtersveld to raise funds for veteran Tour de France commentator Phil Liggett’s Foundation to save rhinos.

Next up for Dave and Nicky is raising R50 000 in the Unogwaja Challenge, which has links to the Community Chest. It involves cycling from Cape Town to KwaZulu-Natal before Dave will attempt his first Comrades Marathon.

So how does Mr Cycle Tour find all this time for doing good?

“One can make excuses for the time one doesn’t have or one can make the time or find the time within a busy life. My personal and private life was reasonably chaotic, but since I met Nicky my life is being planned six months in advance.

“Before we entered Unogwaja we had a family meeting with our young children, to discuss what we wanted to do because we knew the commitment was going to be significant. It wasn’t just a case of we do it and the kids would look after themselves. We discussed it with the children and the time we needed off but we all agreed that this was what we were going to do and they would support us.”

Dave and Nicky are both single parents. On the weekends when their children are with them, they wake at 5am to do a short run so they can spend the rest of the time with their family.

Every other weekend, when the children are not around, they do 120km cycle rides each day.

“It means going to bed at 8.30pm each night and waking up to go for a run or a cycle at 5am – that’s the balance. It’s about balancing with all the important things in your life – the children, your family, your work.

“I was for many years involved in the politics of cycling. I’m absolutely passionate about cycling and passionate about the desire to see cycling in South Africa succeed. But I looked at the toll it was taking on my personal time and my personal life and the things I could be doing with my children and my other loved ones and spending my time doing good.

“I need to focus on the things that add value to my life and some of those things in the political sphere of sport becomes draining. I believe I can do a lot more good in running a mass participation event and promoting the sport. It’s hugely positive, we raise millions for charity and I walk away with a great feeling… and I can still get on with my personal life.”

During our chat at Doppio Zero in St George’s Mall, Dave admits that he is banting. He orders a grilled haloumi salad for lunch. Is it advisable for someone who participates in endurance sport?

“I went on to a 100 percent banting diet just prior to running a three-day trail run and I found myself crashing badly at the end of the first day. In essence, I then adapted our form of banting.

“So we don’t eat refined carbs. We don’t eat pastas, bread or sugar. I haven’t increased my fat intake significantly. What we will do on big multi-stage races is eat potatoes, a natural carb.

“It works for me, it doesn’t work for everybody. Like everything, it comes down to balancing sport, family and work. Food is the same. Do I bant when it comes to drinking? No, I don’t. I enjoy socialising with my partner and we enjoy the odd bottle of wine. I’m never going to compete to be an elite athlete. I love pushing myself but I enjoy having an ice cold beer at the finish. But instead of having six, I’ll have one.”

For Dave, cycling is the metaphor for the life that he discovered much later – even though the sport has been such a big part of his life for so long.

“It’s knowing when to hold back, it’s knowing when to pace yourself, it’s knowing when to push really hard, it’s knowing that things get tough, things get hard and things hurt and being able to push through those. And that comes back to this whole thing of pushing my own boundaries.

“I think we’re all capable of a lot more than we think we’re capable of. And it’s about stretching that ability.”

Cape Argus

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