Bucket List Race: Cape Epic

Baker’s Dozen Wheel Works is one of our custom wheelbuilders that’s based out of California – and they took part in a race of a lifetime this past year. Cape Epic is a eight stage mountain bike race that takes place in South Africa, which covers 45,000 feet of climbing and 409 miles (aka 13,520 / 658 km). Teams of two enter a lottery for entry and you must finish as a team. Here’s their race day recap:

This saga actually begins a year ago when I saw a couple videos of ex-pro road riders Cadel Evans and George Hincapie winning the 2017 master’s division of Cape Epic.  The footage looked amazing and really blinded reality for me, as all I saw was great vistas, exotic animals and cool mountain biking.  I failed to hear a couple Tour de France riders say, “hard, rocky, dusty, hard, rocky, etc…”  I contacted a buddy of mine, Simon, who I met through my wife’s uncle.  About 4 years ago I met Simon when we did the Trans Andes Challenge in Chile.  Compared to Cape Epic, the Trans Andes was really a stage race on training wheels.

After throwing out some words like “bucket list” and “my wife will be totally cool with me going away for two weeks” and “how expensive can it be”, Simon and I threw our name in the lottery.  Yes, it is a lottery for foreigners to get into the race.  Like most lotteries I felt there was no way we were going to win.  No one wins the lottery, right?  Shit, we won.  “Ok”, I said, “Let’s check out some of the stages from last year.  Wait a second….70 miles on a mountain bike per day????”  Oh boy, what had I gotten myself into.  Then the bank opened its doors and money started to flow like a river.

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