Some people really make pink look good - Nashua Ladies Day

2 Jul: The Nashua Mobile Ladies Day (by Leverage Corporation). This is one of my absolute favourite races because it’s fun.  It’s just for the ladies and sjoe do we get spoilt – not just with incredible goodie bags; decent loo’s; a delicious lunch and pudding; massages by Mangwanani; entertainment; but also mechanical assistance if required on route.  Now about this mechanical assistance, the “ladies” look a bit different to the usual female mountainbiker.

Our Lovely Ladies

That’s because they’re guys in drag.  The only way a guy can ride this route at Van Gaalens is to pay more (goes to a good cause); dress up in drag AND provide mechanical assistance to any lady in distress along the way.  And the guys who enter are truly awesome.

This year we entered the 40km and we had a gaggle of gals : me, Delene, Linda, Celeste, Sam, Kim, Gerhard, Clinton and all dressed up.

Linda, Kim, Delene, Clinton, Grems, Sam

We arrived nice and early and got out all our clobber. If you’ve read any of my other posts you’ll know that we’re not the kind who can get out and go. We have to faff: bikes to put together, outfits to put on, tyres to pump, sunblock to apply etc etc etc.  But that’s how we roll – and we’re all ok with it.

We make our way to the start eventually and the announcer counts us down and we’re off.  It’s actually freezing cold.  We try to ride slower so that there’s less wind brushing against us.  After a thick sand trap that would not be out of place on a golf course I stop and am almost in tears – never have my hands been so cold. It feels like my nails will pop off like poorly glue stick ons. Clinton, the kind soul that he is, takes one hand at a time and tries to rub them warm.  He ends up by giving me his inner gloves. Oh thank you.  I can almost feel my finger tips. Its jolly hard to change gears or brake when you can’t feel your fingers.  During this time we lose Linda – she’d been a bit ahead and so as she turned the corner she didn’t see all this. 

The route so far is really nice. There’s dirt roads wide enough for us to ride side by side and chat and then every so often a bit of single track. Nothing too hectic for us ladies.  This is not part of the usual Van Gaalen’s routes.

At some stage the stripping started.  In only a few short hours we’ve gone from almost freezing to death to cooking and so we stop and start stripping of the layers.

Clinton at work (or play)

Mobile Camelbak Technician

As is the norm on any ride with us there’s always some mechanical thing to be attended to – this time Delene’s camelback starts leaking so we stop and Grems fiddles a bit and gets it sorted out.  We get going again and finally come up to the 2^nd water point.  Kim’s got a puncture. No problem Delene says – Clinton please pump Kim’s tyres.  And the lovely obliging chap that he is, he does.  We get going again. We cross the road and wind our way through some nice single track sections and realise that the guys are missing.  Oh don’t worry says Delene – they’ve stopped to help the 3 ladies who were behind us who had some mechanical problems.  They all catch up to us and we’re off again. We arrive at the next water point and another lady has got a puncture and Clinton quickly gets into action, while Delene and I help ourselves to the entire bowl of fizzers (well, we were the last ones – there is no-one else behind us). We get going again (are you picking up a trend here) and we see a lady riding the wrong way – she’s walking with her bike towards us.  We find out that she’s had about her fourth puncture and she’s so over this race that she’s heading back to that water point. Clinton and Grems try to persuade her to continue, they’ll patch and fix and pump; she can ride with us but no she’s gone beyond. So they kindly agree to escort her back to the water table – just in case they’d already packed up when she got there. We carry on and it’s not long before the guys catch up to us.

I don’t think that there were any more mechanicals after that.

It was such a fun day – we’d decided upfront it was going to be a social, chilled ride and it sure was.  Cycling is definitely fun and often super social :D

Peddle, peddle, peddle

We're the last but sjoe it was fun