The 2025 race season kicked off with a bang racing 21 days between February and March across USA, Colombia, South Africa and Canada.
The trip started out visiting Luke Way in Kelowna to dial in the new Kona Ouroboros gravel bike. We tossed in some testing and went over a plan for the coming months. This has been a staple my entire career to keep the engine running hot and improving year after year. Next up was a trip to Arizona for the 24HRs of Old Pueblo to go after the course record. Unfortunately, the body was fighting off a bad flu for a couple weeks which was still lingering on race morning.
Camping on race site in the desert, with the start just 300 meters away, I opted to go out for a couple hot laps and short training day since I was there. The body was running ok and quickly 12 hours had passed, holding onto a nice lead. Being off course record pace and knowing the effects racing the final 12 hours would take, we decided to pull the pin and save the engine for the big block of racing ahead in Colombia and South Africa. Live to fight another day.
Heading to Colombia, still dragging the tail end of the flu, the fingers were crossed things would turn around before the 8-day, 1000 km bike packing race across the South American country. The first 4 days were spent exploring Bogota, watching Team Canada take down the American hockey team, then biking over a 3200 m pass in a typical Colombian afternoon rainstorm to race start in Choachi. Choachi is typical Colombian pueblo surrounded in natural beauty and the La Chorrerra waterfall, which is 590M high and the tallest in the country. It rained a lot here but was a good introduction to rural Colombia living.
TransCordilleras:
Stage 1 of Transcordilleras started out bleak waking up at 4:30 am to a resurgent’s of my flu and and a solid rainstorm. With 137 km & 4000 m of climbing on deck through a remote Colombian national park, it was going to be a tough day. It turned into a proper trudge, getting dropped early from the lead group of 10 riders. Riding in no man’s land, GPX track on my computer randomly got deleted. I’d have to soft pedal and wait for the next riders as there were no course markings in the event.
It turned into a memorable day riding with a nice group including race organizer Mauricio and American Austin. The scenery through the jungle was lush with some brilliant rock out cropping’s which were visible whenever the clouds lifted in the Colombian mist. 8 hours later we would roll across the finish line, completely destroyed. The final blow was riding 9 km across town to the race hotel, this would take 1.5 hours, stopping for a couple food breaks to take in some local Arepas and other corn fried treats to replenish the depleted system. Mentally I was a bit cracked not knowing how much longer this flu was going to last and with 7 big stages still to go on deck.
Waking up for stage 2, things weren’t much better but thankfully it was a flat paved stage to start. Unfortunately some riders, lead by Alex Howes decided to attack at the gun causing a pretty hectic start ripping through town, dodging traffic, and eventually out into rural Colombia. I’d hang on to a large group which meant cruising pretty nicely for 3 hours after the fireworks cooled off. Following this we hit the first dirt of the day, a rugged 1000-meter vert descent through the jungle. The Ouroboros with 2.25 Maxxis Aspen tires and 50 mm of Fox suspension was built for this and we rock and rolled passing a number of riders, nearing the top 10 by race finish.
From this point on the heath and riding improved drastically, crawling my way up to 6th in GC by the end with a couple top 5 stage finishes mixed in.
Stage 3 started with a couple muddy and rugged off road climbs through the jungle before a long paved descent. Following this was 50 km of rolling highway riding to the finish. It was a bit boring towards the end until we hit the last 2 km racing full throttle through town. I took a wrong turn, but so did the others shortly after, resulting in a gongshow as we battled for a top 5. I’d lose out and roll in 7th but that was ok as the body was getting healthy again and we avoided all catastrophes ripping through town.
Stage 4 kicked off with 2 hours of gnarly riding through some lowland bush with sticky mud, before a hot and exposed 1500 vertical meter climb to the finish. This stage saw some of the best meltdowns all week with riders all over the mountainside looking for sweets and drinks at the roadside gas stations and local stands. It was a tough day on the bikes as the early mud clogged everything up before getting sun baked onto our bikes on the long exposed climb. Hitting the finish line was when the real work started as we all took off to the local car wash to pressure wash both our bikes and ourselves to start the recovery process. The entire afternoon was taken up either eating or washing stuff, before catching some rest for the big climbing day ahead
Stage 5 started with a 50 km climb straight up a stunning paved road to El Sifon pass (4150 m) before dropping down a winding decent to race finish at 2900 m. Here we would have a typical Colombian lunch then roll neutral down a busy road to the gorgeous ridge top city of Manizales (2000 meters). This town was one of the highlights of the week with all the amenities available including a number of bike shops and a buzzing latin culture. With the race being fully self-supported, these types of oasis’s were important to restock on race supplies and make sure the bikes were ready for the upcoming stages. My front wheel needed a truing and the bike some TLC. Rolling into town we passed a large Specialized dealer who was more then happy to drop everything to help us dirty bike packers out.
Stage 6 was a shorter 60 km day which turned into a lightning-fast stage as we all morphed our diesel engines into proper high end race machines. This day ended in a low-lying tourist town with a bunch of restaurants and a few grocery stores, a 5-10 minute ride down the road from the race resort. A huge part in a self supported bike packing racing is to only pack what you absolutely need. Lachlan Morton and I had bought sandals after stage 2 but neither of us could find a way to pack them to the next stage so left them behind and were both walking around bare foot. This was a problem riding into town to reload on groceries, as the security guard wouldn’t allow entrance, pointing to a sign saying no bare feet allowed. Thirsty, hungry, tired and bummed out, I started looking for a solution. Checking out my emergency bag, I found a set of latex plastic gloves which were packed to put over my cycling gloves on the high mountain passes. These were the solution to the current problem, wearing them like socks, and reluctantly being allowed to keep shopping.
Stage 7 was a proper day out with 123 km and 3300 vertical meters of climbing, with over half being on rough dirt. Alex Howes and I were within 45 seconds of each other in the GC fight for 6th. Mid race he would catch up to me as we settled in for what was surely going to be an epic battle to the end. Pretty soon I noticed his seat bag was nearly touching is rear wheel. Alex pulled over to find his carbon seat post broken. This was a real bummer for him, requiring some nifty bushman skills, pounding bamboo into the inside of the seat post to provide some support so he could finish the stage, losing lots of time, but finishing. That night we finished in a country town called Tamesis with a buzzing central square. Being Friday night, it filled up with locals, including a bunch of cowboys. It’s tough to match the energy of a Latin American town on a weekend night!
Stage 8 was the finale as we headed through the jungle on a 54 km, 1600 vertical meter course to the tourist town of Jardin. Heading out of town on a narrow gravel road, the 100 rider peloton came head-to-head with a colourful local chicken bus. It was a standstill traffic jam. Seeing a small path through the foliage I used some bushmen skills to sprint around the bus and was suddenly off the front with Colombian Bryan Chavez. The flyweight climber would drop me towards the top of the opening climb, and soon the top 3 riders in the race, Simon, Griffin and Lachlan would roll bye. I found some solid legs to hold onto this train for nearly an hour before getting dropped on the last super steep 20% climb before the finish, eventually rolling in solo for 5th on the stage, 6th GC. Jardin was a great finish to the week with the afternoon spent at the resort celebrating the last 8 days of memories and stories made riding across Colombia.
After a night out on the town taking in another weekend night in Colombia, we caught some rest before preparing for the 4-5 hr transfer by bus back to Medellin in the morning. Seeing it was just 130 km, I opted to ride and would narrowly beat the buss to Medellin as it got caught up in some traffic. The ride was the icing on the cake with a beautiful twisty road the first half before a typical 2.5 hr Colombian climb over a mountain before descending into one of Colombia’s tourist hubs. Spending the night with my Colombian friends Jacob and Alexandra put a nice local touch to finish the South American portion of the trip.
Next up was a flight from Medellin-Bogota-London to South Africa for Cape Epic. This looked straight forward. Unfortunately when checking into the flight from Bogota to London, the Avianca airlines staff kindly told me I couldn’t check in without a Yellow Fever Vaccination. Thankfully I had a digital copy of this from South Africa in 2021. Unfortunately they wouldn’t accept anything but a physical copy. This had been lost in a rainstorm while biking up Mt Kilimanjaro and was gone for good. Checking in 5 hours before the flight, left some time to figure things out but there was no hope to catch that flight without the card or a doctor’s note. Messaging my doctor, Declan, in Canada, there was no response for 3 hours as he was on days off. Luckily he got back to me with just 15 minutes to spare before check in closed. A written letter explaining some egg allergy, then running around the airport to print it off, left me checking in with seconds to spare and onwards to South Africa!
The travel was smooth from this point onwards, landing in Cape Town 22 hours later. My friend Adi had everything arranged from an airport pickup with Laz to 6 nights in his Cape Town Oasis where I’d rest up from Colombia, eat some great food, and prepped for the world’s largest 1 day time cycling event, the Cape Town Cycle Tour. Putting some Maxxis 32 c tires on my Ouroboros gravel bike and replacing the Fox 50 mm suspension with a rigid fork, morphed the adventure machine into a road bike for the weekend.
Joining 28000 + other cyclists at the Cycle Tour Sunday morning at 6 am was a day on the bike I’ll never forget. The biggest challenge was getting to the 6:15 am start in time as there were security fences everywhere through the African city, special VIP entrances and basically one giant fenced in maze. I’d join a couple other confused African riders, and we’d eventually figure out the maze after 15 minutes and arrived at the start just in time to take off full gas with the 200 rider Elite field. The rolling 109 km loop around the peninsula south of Cape Town was beautiful with lots of Ocean front riding, cliffs, African cheer zones and closed roads the entire route. It was full on with Helicopters filming the action as the peloton blasted around the course in 2 hrs and 25 minutes, around 45 km/hr, breaking the course record by minutes. The Ouroboros was great, the only limiter was the 48-11 hearing which left me spinning out at 130+ rpm down the hills trying to latch onto faster wheels.
3 days later I’d shift over to Stellenbosch, joining Christoph Sauser and the Specialized crew for the Songo Short track fundraiser race Wednesday evening then onto the Cape Epic! That report is coming up next…
Back to the Sea Otter Circus here in California as we open up the North American lifetime Grand Prix Gravel season tomorrow!
