Tuesday, 20 August Posted by Velouria Posted on 3 comments. At 10 o'clock on a cold, windy morning in the sleepy hollow of Willowmore, one of the highlights on the South African mountain biking calendar gets underway - the Trans Baviaans.
For The Night Time Ninjas, the race begins several months before, and I'm not talking about competing with other teams, I'm talking about the intra-team competition. Trans Baviaans 10 The objective is to give the impression that you are the weakest link in the three man team, while doing everything in your power to ensure that you aren't. The only rule is "There are no rules". Anything goes - secret training, strategic alliances, double crossing, faked illnesses, false rumours, doctored Strava uploads.
It's a mental game that has you secretly spying on teammates' training progress, inflating body fat percentages, and doing some extra training on the rollers in the garage where no one can see. Come the race weekend all that changes - the gloves come off, the secrets are spilled and you talk up your game to convince your teammates that you are in peak form, finely tuned and ready to race.
In a three man team you don't have to be the fastest, but you certainly don't want to be the slowest. Red sky at night?
Part of my pre-race psychological warfare arsenal is to book our accommodation in the Willowmore Primary School hostel. Apart from being convenient and central, it has several characteristics that tend to get to Old Man John. There is seldom hot water, and for a shower addict this is apparently quite a problem. The mattresses are thin, the pasta meal is oily and stodgy, the wooden floors are noisy, the rooms are cold, the toilets clog frequently, and there is always at least one team that has to wake up at 5 in the morning and walk around making a noise like a herd of Nguni cattle.
