Before we get on to the prologue, a little background info on the format of the Cape Epic race.

Obviously we ride mountain bikes. The course follows (a little) tar, (more) district roads, (lots of) farm roads, (some) rugged jeep track and as much single-track as possible. The route designer, Leon Evans a.k.a. Dr Evil tries to find a balance between “real” mountain bike routes and having to cover the longer distances that the Epic is known for. You just can’t do 100km on only singletrack. It doesn’t exist and even if it did it would take all week! So there are “interesting” technically challenging sections linked by “less interesting” head down grinding-it-out sections.

One of the interesting bits

Perhaps less obviously, the Epic is a team event. Each team consists of two riders and rule 116, b, part 1 section iv, is that you must at all times be within 2 minutes of each other. This is an internationaly sanctioned UCI event and there are a lot of rules.

There are 600 teams so 1200 riders are all trying to do the same thing at the same time. A bit of a bun fight really with handbags often swing around in hissy fits. Participants vary from the top of the professional ladder to the “I just hope to make it through each day and not miss the cutoff”. Which is normally around 10 hours but is sometime 11 on really long or tough stages. Some don’t make it but the Pro’s of course do. Typically the Pro’s ride 4 and a half hours for about 100km.

The winning team is the one with the lowest total time over for the entire event. But stage wins are also prestigious so every day is a race within a race. And even in that there are category races on the go – Open (which is all comers but actually means young, extremely talented and well trained men), Masters (40+), Grand Masters (50+), Ladies (that, interestingly do not have age groupings) and Mixed (boy and girl, not just two confused Masters). There is also an African team category as the race is normally won by international professionals and the local media needs something to stir the hearts of the home fans.

This year, last years winner, the multiple world champion Christoph Sauser is teamed up with the current Olympic (amongst others) gold medalist Jaroslov Kulhavy. Christoph’s partner last year was Burry Stander who recently was tragically killed while out training for the event. His father and wife (widow) are also in the field and it is quite emotional for them as you can well understand.

Christoph and Jaroslav look nervously down the ramp. Not!

Kevin Evans and David George normally win the African leaders jersey, except this year David is, er, indisposed due to performance enhancing drug indiscretions and Kevin hasn’t recovered from an appendectomy on 15 January – 2011!!. No really. It never healed properly and despite racing since then he has had to have in drained again and again recently. Racing with a bag attached via a pipe through to your abdominal cavity is too much of a disadvantage.

The event takes place over 8 days starting with a short Prologue and is followed by 7 long stages. This year we lined up for the prologue at Meerendal Wine Farm and each team started separately, rolling down the ramp to thunderous applause from the rapturous crowd. Actually, I made that up. What really happens is that roll down nervously hoping not to end your event before it is even properly begun!

Our early start down the ramp

With the adrenaline flowing you always start far faster than you can realistically sustain so after about 5 mins you slow down and let your heart rate recover to a more reasonable 90% or so. Ha! Even that is not sustainable, but we did keep going up to the top of the first climb called Stairway to Heaven. Luckily were we randomly were allocated an early slot so with only 9 teams ahead of us we didn’t have that much traffic to contend with. A fast descent and across to the Hoogtekraal farm for the next climb with stunning views of Table Mountain rising above a blanket of morning fog. Then down. Then up. And down and up again, You get the general picture!

Amazing views on the prologue.

What is most interesting about the course is that after the start ramp, we turned straight into the historic Meerendal manor house. As in, we rode right through the hallway. In at the back door and out the front, down the two flights of steps onto the lawns and off.

Watching later we saw a number of riders walking down the short flights which did not bode well for some of the obstacles to follow. One rider even walked the first flight, hopped on and rode down the second flight. Go figure.

So, the answer to the poser in the title is 22km. For Jayson and I it took about 1h11m and we managed to clinch 81st place overall. While that might not sound brilliant, it is actually. So there!<