There's a feeling you get when you're riding a steel-frame race bike with down-tube shifters on a rough gravel road. You give in and you accept your fate. You grind up a punishing hill without looking for another gear, because you know you don't have one. You listen to the crunch of dirt under your 28c tyres and you don't even think about punctures anymore, because punctures are a part of life.
Eventually, all your worries start to melt off your shoulders. Life is distilled to the essentials: landscape, body, bike. You could just keep riding... How far could you go? You turn your face to the sun, born again in the simple act of pedalling, humbled by the world and your tiny place in it.
I usually get this feeling once a year, in the Baden Valley north of Montagu, on a private road that's only open to cyclists during Eroica - a weekend-long celebration of vintage cycling. The road is bumpy and rough, snaking off a ridge towards a river, surrounded by mountains. It would be technical on a mountain bike; on a road bike, it's hell.
But it's a beautiful kind of hell, and my old Peter Allan carries me along with dignity. I ride in the drops, skirting shale bands that rise like shark fins from the ground, guiding my front wheel around rocks and ruts. My mind slows down and eventually goes quiet. I listen to my breathing, pausing only to reach down and change gears.
I am a tuft of sheep's wool, adrift on the breeze.
SUFFERING AND GLORY
Eroica South Africa is an offshoot of the OG event, L'Eroica, which has taken place since 1997 in the hills of Tuscany, drawing thousands of so-called eroici each year. (Eroica was the inspiration for Strade Bianchi - the World Tour race on the same Italian roads, first held in 2007.) The name means 'heroic' in Italian, and that's what Eroica celebrates: the beautiful conquest of cycling from days gone by.
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