Blog #2: Undercover Hustler.
Cycling is a tough sport, not just in the way that it is physically and mentally demanding, but also in the way that it challenges you outside of the realms of performance and pedaling your bike faster. In this blog, I’ll share a bit more about my experiences racing overseas beyond just the racing itself; namely traveling on the lekker Green Mamba passport, becoming a logistics master and how the life of an athlete is never as glamorous as it seems on social media.
This year, I really want to… Travel the world.
The above sentence usually features on most people’s New Year’s resolutions lists in early January. Yes, I too made a Travel mood board on Pinterest at some point in my life, filled with the “broaden your horizons” and “wanderlust” themes of a teenager viewing the idea of traveling through rose tinted glasses. Well, reality is often quite different to how we imagine things, as we later discovered.
Don’t get me wrong, exploring different parts of the world has been one of the coolest parts of bike racing. The people you meet, the cultures you’re introduced to and the places you see are experiences that you can’t put a price on. Honestly, unmatched.
However, getting from A to B can be challenging when your passport requires you to get a visa to visit almost any other country outside of your own. I once Googled how strongly the South African passport ranks on a global scale and was pretty surprised to see that there were actually passports deemed as being “weaker” than the Green Mamba. Crazy right? Well, needless to say that being a South African passport holder does pose its challenges, and requires some creative thinking and visa hustling to navigate the travel hurdles, as well as standing in the super long “All Other Passports” queue at border control where you get grilled about what you’re doing in the country (always on holiday), where you’ll be staying, how long you’ll be there for and in some cases, “Can I please see your flight ticket home?”
Life seems to be lekker when your passport is red and not green. But we like to keep things interesting.
Logistics 101
How to become a logistics master? Well just start cycling internationally as a foreign citizen and you will have to learn quite fast! I think I have lost count of the number of travel-related apps I have on my phone, such as the train apps specific to each country, E-hailing, trip planner apps and translation apps available on the fly. I wouldn’t necessarily say that the quantity of apps is directly proportional to how good you are at planning logistics, but more often a case of needs-must when trying to move your way around a country, particularly in cases where you need to rely on public transport and nearly no one speaks English.
I would say that traveling on my own made me grow up quite fast. You will often encounter situations where something goes wrong on your trip, and the only person able to help you out of that situation is yourself. Yes of course, you can always phone a friend/family (if you have signal, data and a valid SIM), but there have certainly been plenty of situations where I’ve had to exercise my best problem-solving skills to work out a way forward when I’ve felt isolated or alone in a struggle to just get from point A to B. As much as these moments have been challenging, I learnt a lot from them, and they always make for good stories.
An example would be; a trip from the UK to France. Starting off with having a cancelled flight, we were put on the next one 4 hours later to a completely different airport. We then needed to catch five trains from Switzerland across to France with a cardboard bike box that my bike’s chainring teeth wore through, which subsequently began to be grinded down whenever I pushed my bike box along the many train platforms. Meaning, the only option was to carry it everywhere; up and down flights of stairs, into the mostly-unairconditioned trains of France in peak European Summer, and eventually, arriving at our accommodation 15 hours after we left home that morning. Thankfully, the trip did get much better after that. It actually ended up being one of the highlights of my year.
Route Master
As a cyclist exploring a new area, Strava is often your best friend. On our way to races, we often need to do activation rides in areas we’ve never been to before, which means we ideally need to know where we are going. Creating a route for a ride is often a popular point of discussion, and I think most athletes will have some stories of some crazy routes that the likes of Strava, Komoot, Garmin etc. have sent them on. Getting lost is part of the experience and it’s especially fun when you are sent on a rocky, rooty path/singletrack on the road bike, when you were pretty sure you selected the option of having a “paved” route whilst creating it on the app. These cases do tend to happen less as you master the art of route-making, but the beauty of cycling is that you never know everything, and can always learn something, even if by surprise.
Some of the coolest routes I’ve done have taken me up into the mountains, or along the coast. Also, riding through rivers and jumping over fences in South Africa to ride up an epic climb someone’s friend recommended to them, that almost certainly borders on private property. But I guess we’ll never know, and I’ll let the pictures from the view at the top speak for themselves. Viewing the world by bike never gets old. You gotta do it for the plot, and all for expanding the Strava heatmap.
Social Media is a Highlight Reel
Don’t believe everything you see on the internet. Behind success in competitive sport is a whole lot of other stuff that goes on behind the scenes that is not posted on social media. Exhibit A would be some of the travel and logistical cases I’ve mentioned above, but also the hustle, drive and determination to put in the hard work when no one is watching. Few people in your life will truly see what it takes to achieve your goals. They have seen you at your worst, at your best and everything in between, and still support you anyway. Keep them close.
My story of pursuing a dream halfway across the world and the sacrifice that comes with that is one shared among many athletes. It is what makes us unique. There have been moments where I have doubted and questioned myself, whether I will ever achieve the goals and dreams I’ve held since I was young and whether I’m good enough to make it happen. In the same breath, there have also been moments of pure elation, celebration and success. Cycling can be a cruel but also beautiful sport.
The truth is that the life of an athlete is far from glamorous; it’s eating 2min microwave rice out of a packet in a race car park, it’s wearing every single layer of winter kit you own just so you can sweat like a fountain in your own home doing heat training, it’s dragging a bike bag and suitcase through foreign streets at 1am in the dark returning from a bike race, it’s living out of said suitcase for weeks on end while you’re constantly moving from one place to another, it’s trying your best to explain a very complicated mechanical situation with your bike using just hand signals to someone who doesn’t speak your language, it’s being woken up at 5am to pee in a cup and have blood samples taken (for ant-doping purposes), it’s spending a fortune at the pharmacy to buy all the plasters you need for your crash-wounds, it’s pushing your body to its absolute limit, and some, until you practically collapse from exhaustion, it’s all these things and more. And that’s why we love it so much.
As athletes, we are all secretly undercover hustlers. Aside from actually doing our sport, I think we are more multi-faceted than what we give ourselves credit for. The drive, passion, adaptability, ability to problem-solve and critical thinking are all qualities which we all hold and build on along the way. The experiences I’ve gained through this sport have taught me so much about myself and the world around me. Crazy and character-building, I am quite excited for what is coming next.
Thank you to Echelon SA and BBL Security Products their continued support, allowing me more opportunities to be an undercover hustler and making the process of getting from A to B safer and easier!
*Pictured wearing the Abus GameChanger 2.0 helmet in Flip Flop Purple! You can find it on their website here.
