Sani is coming Part 2 - The Honda Mountain Trophy (The Donkey Edition)

Back from Cape Town with no casualties this time on the flight. The Honda Mountain Trophy was the last chance to prove your readiness. With only 2 weeks to go… this 75km on Saturday followed by another 45km on the Sunday on the out skirts of the cradle near Hekpoort was to be the last big effort.

It all started with a 04h00 wakeup call to get to registration. Spiderman (some will remember him from Berge & Dale) was collected on the way. Donkey and Spiderman then hits the starting pen at 06h30 and waited for the gun to go off. Suddenly a flashback hits…

This is a very special race for Donkey. (i.e it scares the crap out of him). Just two years ago when this event was attempted for the first time. Donkey had the worst experience of any race ever. The camel back leaked on the way to the race. Donkey did not notice this. Rain the night before left a slippery, muddy, un-rideble route for the Sunday leg. This meant that after two hours of walking up steep, slippery hills swearing as many foul words as he can muster with nothing to drink and only 20km completed. Eventually Donkey noticed that they were going past the start/finish line before heading out for the last 25km loop. There was only one thing on his mind. "Beep" this "beep", I’m going home !!!

Having not completed it last time, nerves were high and pride was at stake… But NO! We were here and this had to be done. For pride, for Sani and for the bike wash (keep reading , this was gooooood)! Finally the first leg starts with an 8km downhill road section followed by an easy 6km gravel section. As unbelievable as this may sounds, that was the last time the words “Downhill” or “Easy” were used to describe the route. The 60km that followed was long, hard, rocky, dusty, steep and generally a tough ride. Spiderman started showing signs of struggle early on. Apparently he was pumping his “tires” till 1:00 in the morning. Donkey encouraged him with motivational lines like “WTF Bra?” and “Is this gonna take long”. This did not have the effect Donkey was hoping for. To help matters along spiderman broke a chain. We fixed it, but he forgot to close his pouch afterwards and lost all of his equipment. This allowed about 100 riders to pass and hold us up at every slight technical bridge, river crossing, tree stump or single track we came across.

In hindsight, it could be worse. 15km from the end we saw a dude go down on a long, high speed, technical descent. We stopped and called the paramedics. Shortly after one arrived on a motor bike and we continued our race. We later found out that he was taken to hospital. He broke his font and back ribs, his shoulder and an arm. So basically, 'just' a flesh wound. Nothing to 'flesh' about.

Spiderman started to get some of his legendary spidy-powers back as his spidy senses picked up the complimentary Pap and Braai vleis that was waiting back at the finish. Wait … Actually, I am lying. The food had nothing to do with it. This is not BObbie after all. Yes, you guessed it. I looked up and saw Spider man pulling away from me. A few meters in front of him was a lady in Europecar kit sporting nothing short of an “ass you could bounce a coin off of”. It was spectacular!!! We finished Day 1 in a still respectable 04h45 (165th out of 500 riders).

Move aside Avengers, the Spider is here!

Donkey: (clarifying) It is a Centrum top, but the dirt you see, made it yellow...

What followed can only be described as carnage. After the complimentary braai, Spiderman single handed put a dent in the world's chicken population. Donkey also saw supply and demand at work when so much pasta was consumed that the price per bag went up by 50c. And when we finally falls, we fell hard, only to wake the next morning.

Up again on Sunday at 06h00 for a 08h00 start. The legs are stiff and back aches, the dehydration headache has now firmly set in and everyone has these pretentious smiles on their faces like they are trying to convince their partners that all is ok.

Day two was sold as “the Fast and the Furious”, by which I think they meant “Eff you! There is another furious hill approaching fast”. No downhill road sections today. Out on the trail from the start for some tricky rolling hills that again claimed a broken finger around the half way mark. They did announce afterwards that no less then 14 bones were broken during the two days of riding.

This time Donkey was taking some strain, this could have had something to do with all the beer “carbo shake” that he consumed the night before. But for now, it is just a speculation. Spiderman and Donkey got separated near the start but regrouped around the 30km mark. They rode together with Spiderman doing the “convincing” this time with his own version of famous motivational extracts such as “Get moving or I leave you here” and “This is not the time or the place for a smoke break”!

The pace though continues to be fast and in just 02h10 they returned to receive some more "carbo shake" and a medal at the finish line. Yes, you read that correctly, no power aid or other silly energy drinks at the finish. These guys just had ICE COLD "carbo shakes" for every rider!!! Other race organizers, this is how it should be done!