Swellendam is many things, according to the local tourism website. It is “quirky, country, rebellious”. It is home to South Africa’s best Italian restaurant. It’s the fourth-oldest town in the country.
It has the Full Stop restaurant, a place you would call a local and not fuss too much about the décor. It has over 50 heritage sites. It is two hours from Cape Town. And every year it hosts the Coronation Double Century, perhaps the grandest cycle race on the South African calendar.
The Coronation Double Century is a 202km team ride that starts and finishes in the town, and on Saturday it was nearly the undoing of me. I like riding a bike. I just don’t like the training so much, which is probably my mistake. Riding becomes training and makes the riding better.
Perhaps a total of 140 minutes spent on my 10-year old Specialized Tarmac E5 before the Double Century was a mistake. The bike is a classic, having taken Jamie Ball to third in the Cape Town Cycle Tour. It will never finish so high in a race again.
I died a thousand deaths over the DC. My legs had blown before the first climb after 40km, and the rest of the body followed shortly after.
My back was a mess on the rolling hills just after that, and then my head decided to take leave of the rest of me shortly after. I considered giving up more, climbing into the support van, but I was not allowed to. The rest of our group would not allow me to bail.
It’s a matter of honour to bring all 12 of your team across the line. Each team that does gets a Charles Milner medal, named after the founder of the DC.
His sons rode this year in memory of their father who passed away earlier in the year. We rode as a group of 36, three teams of friends, sponsors, administrators, politicians and media coming together for a day out on a bike.
David Bellairs of the Cycle Tour Trust and I began the adventure seven-odd years ago almost by mistake. Bellairs had invited me down to ride with a team of nine. By the Tuesday before the race we were down to seven riders, a few days later down to five. By the time I landed it was just he and I.
We started with another team, and then bounced from team to team as we got dropped or were too quick for another. We finished in a shade under nine hours. I was hooked.
Since then, our little bit of fun has grown to my favourite sporting weekend of the year. We have added a cycling development push as part of the team, putting bikes into the local community and inviting riders from Railton, Manie Fortuin and Danville Pietersen, who had not ridden more than 50km before the joined us four or five years ago.
My friend, Wynand Olivier, a former dominee who runs a popular café called the Old Gaol in the town, began the cycling project some years ago.
On Friday, the team donated 12 bikes to a school on the route. On Thursday, some team members held a basic skills training clinic and donated some more bikes to Railton. There is a special kind of joy in the eyes of children when they get bikes. It changes their lives, shortens their commute time to school and to the shops. It’s not about us feeling good, but about doing good.
Small things help change lives.On Saturday I thought my life would change for the worse.
Five of the talented riders from the Velokhaya cycling project in Khaelitsha were with us: Mihlali Lupuwana, Bhongolwethu Maqoko, Nicholas Qotoyi, Anele Mazibuko and Mthetheleli Boya. They are strong riders, properly strong. The Double Century has become a permanent part of their year. They had been told to keep an eye on the short man with no training in his legs, and they did, coaxing me and then pushing me up hills, when the wind and rain and cold became too much. They got me to the finish in Swellendam, the town that is quirky, country and rebellious. - The Star