The 2009 edition of The Freedom Challenge, which is a 2300km mountain bike race from Pietermaritburg to Paarl, was an amazing journey over our incredibly beautiful and diverse country.

When one spends 12-14 hours on average on a mountain bike over some of South Africa’s toughest terrain, there’s bound to be some challenges, both psychologically and mechanically.

Personally, I found that it was the mechanical issues led to the psychological challenges, while the physical demands were quite reasonable to deal with. When bike parts were malfunctioning and being tested to the limit, I came very close to not completing the event.

The amazing thing that I found was that there were was very committed support in various forms ranging from total strangers to friends and family back home, who made it possible for me to finish the race.

Travelling 2300km’s over South Africa on a mountain bike, I got to see and experience parts of this amazing country that I probably wouldn’t have seen otherwise and meet people in some remote nooks and crannies of the country that I probably would never have met if it weren’t for the Freedom Challenge.

It’s quite amazing how often I became filled with emotion while doing this event. Sometimes, just simple image of a rural boy cloaked in a blanket with an incredible smile on his face to hoards of school children swarming towards you as if you were some rock star or the warm friendliness of our hosts who fed us and look after all the riders like royalty, whether we were smelly or not or viewing the amazing landscapes that make up this amazing country.

The single most important aspect I took out of the Freedom Challenge was that we can try and be self-sufficient, but at some point we need to rely on other people and the assistance they can offer. With this thought in mind, we all need assistance at some point or other, some more than others and some for different and varied reasons.

Riding for The JAG Foundation emphasised this point even more to me. If we could all throw a pebble into the pond and create a ripple and make a difference to someone else’s life, whether we know them or not.