Charles's mountainbiking story:

After school and university, I got wrapped up in the business world and really let my state of physical health slip into the doldrums. Absolutely no excercising discipline existed which went completely against everything I stood for. Following desperate attempts to try and turn my state of health around, even leaving Johannesburg for Cape Town, conditions worsened. My lowest moment came when I got onto one of those non-digital, rotating dial scales that only measured to 125 kilograms....confusion turned to disbelief and then shock when the scale read 15 kilograms!!!...yes...it had gone full circle, passed begin, collected another dohnut and settled on 15...I was weighing more than 140kilos!!! Something drastic needed to happen...so Heids and I decided to move to the sleepy little town of Ladybrand in the eastern Freestate.


Soon after our arrival, I decided to become more conscious of my eating habits and very quickly managed to shed a couple of kilos. One thing led to another and it wasn't long before I was invited by Leon, a friend in Ladybrand, to join him for a bike ride. Excuses flowed and after a couple of weeks in hiding I just couldn't get away with it anymore...30kilometers were covered in nothing less than 2hours and plenty!!..as much as I felt like my body had been turned inside out, there was a sense of achievement and I agreed to do it again...hoping it wouldn't be too soon... No such luck, within the next week I was roped into repeating this murderous exercise, Leon was not one to take a "no thanks" On this ride, though, Leon had decided that he and I were going to start training for the Argus...yes sir!! no sir!! three bags full sir!!... Unfortunately not long after this, tragedy struck and Leon passed away in a terrible car accident.
My sense of loyalty kicked in and I decided to ride the Argus in memory of Leon. I roped in a couple of other folk who would commit to training themselves up and joining me on the ride for Leon. Training began in ernest, new bikes were bought and slowly but surely, the numbers on the scale were decreasing steadily.
Then came the second tragedy, Jannie, a very good friend of mine from Johannesburg who agreed to join us at the Argus, passed away from a heart attack! What could one say, this was really becoming one of the most inexplicably emotional journeys.
Instead of getting too caught up in these tragedies, somehow I decided to go through the roof in preparing for the Argus. I was going to give everything to the memory of Leon and Jannie. Some local mountain bike races came up in area and I decided to enter a couple.

By now I was managing to complete that original 30km loop that Leon first took me on, in about 1 hour and 40 minutes...almost an hour off that first attempt!! Somehow, without any previous experience in racing, I was managing to finish in the top half of the entrants and started to believe more and more in my abilities.
When Argus came along, we had an awesome ride and celebrated the lives of Leon and Jannie through the ride and then well into the night....

Returning to Ladybrand, I was now tipping the scales at around the 125 kilo mark, most importantly...I wasn't passing the zero on that scale anymore!! There may not have been a training goal but somehow I had become 'addicted' to the excercise...more bikes were bought and committment increased..."stand back!! we don't know how big this things gonna be"
More and more races were attended with results improving all the time. Training intensity was going balistic and by now I was well under the 1hr30min mark for that 30kilomtere route, now more commonly known as "Leon's loop" the next year saw me competing in a number of the bigger marathons around the country, including the monster Trans Baviaans, a 230 kilometer race through the Baviaans kloof. This was almost exactly a year after that very first 30 kilomter ride with Leon. Somehow there was always just another goal to be achieved as time went on. The following year saw me getting a last minute invite to ride the 9 day Joberg2c race, my partner would be Malcolm Heathfield whom I had never met before and wow! did we ride well together, we ended up finishing in 15th overall position out of more than 250 teams!

Back to the scale, I was now clocking in at around 110kilos and Leons loop was down to about 1h15minutes. More bikes were bought and finally the big decision had to be made...was I ready to take on the toughest stage race in the world? the ABSA Cape Epic, the answer came easily when Lancers Inn Maseru offered to sponsor our entry fee, Malcolm agreed and now the training got super serious...
Epic training would go on to log more than 12000km's on the roads, 121000 meters of climbing and countless hours in the saddle. Just prior to the Epic I was tilting the scales at 96kilos and completing Leon's loop in 1h 5 minutes.. All in all, 45kilos in weightloss and more than 1h30min off Leon's loop...our goal for the Epic...top 100...to cut a really long story short, we sneaked in at 99th spot overall, totally over the moon for achieving a seamingly impossible goal.


I have always had an increadibly competitive nature and since the Epic, I found myself wondering around, not really having that all important goal to train for....Hello Freedom Challenge 2013!!! Bring it on!!!