You’ve read the tales of training from Anka and Megan as they prepared for the Absa Cape Epic, a South African mountain bike race that certainly deserves it name. Having returned from more than a week of riding hard and riding dirty, the girls are back and ready to share their post-race story. Click here to check out the photos!

After nine long days, Megan and I finally saw the last sign stating that we had 1km to go to get to the finish line. This sign stirred up some extremely happy emotions, but also some very sad ones after all these months of hard work and preparation. We made it through the race without punching each other — in fact, we got to know each other really well — and it all just added to an already strong and amazing friendship.

We had an amazing week, long hours (we rode for longer than we slept each day), extremely hot weather (100+ degrees), miles and miles of sand and corrugated dirt roads that just killed our backsides…We ate and ate and ate, and then ate some more!

Andy, Megan’s husband, also came out to help us through this ordeal of a week, and he was our savior at the end of every day, washing our bikes, charging our Garmins, finding us empty tents to sleep in, and carrying our gear bags for us. (You have no idea how heavy those bags feel at the end of every day.)

We had no major mechanical issues or even flat tires all 950km — pretty lucky, as we passed numerous teams each day with some kind of problem. Megan had one nasty crash on a fast downhill section, and I had various “Oh Shit” moments, but we stayed in one piece and finished a strong 14th overall in the Ladies category. Out of the 25 Ladies teams that started, only 17 ended up finishing. We were 306 out of 650 teams in the overall category — not too shabby for two non-pro XC/DH racers. We did kill it on all the DH sections, though!

Thank you to all of our supporters and family members who cheered us on and fed us along the way. (And also put up with us and all our funny, special nutrition needs and training programs.)

A big thank-you to all of our sponsors for supporting us and helping us achieve our goal of racing the Cape Epic. You guys ROCK!

Will we be there next year? Let’s think about it for a little while…La Ruta has a nice ring to it! –Anka Martin