An epic Mother’s Day celebration

2016-05-06

Mother’s Day will have a special resonance this year for four 2016 Absa Cape Epic finishers.
Nicky Webb finished the gruelling 13th edition of the event with her daughter Mikayla while Colleen Jacobs did the same with her daughter Johandri.
And all four agreed that it was a bonding experience second to none.

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“It was very special to ride it with my mother,” said 28-year-old Johandri. “It was beautiful for our relationship.”
Mikayla, 24, described it as “an amazing experience … one that I hope more mother-and-daughter teams can have”.
Colleen is an experienced mountain biker and was doing her fifth Absa Cape Epic while daughter Johandri was taking it on for the first time.
After a few tough days early on Johandri got into the rhythm of the event and “kept getting better and stronger”, recalled 55-year-old Colleen, who last weekend won her age group race at the SA Masters Marathon Championships.
Johandri recalls sitting down after the opening stage and “crying really hard”, but her mother’s encouragement eventually persuaded her to put her head down and persevere. “The last few days were more fun,” she laughed.
She recalled a sad moment when “my dad (Johan), riding with my brother (Michael), had to withdraw on Stage 3, when he got bad dehydration … that was hard for me because we wanted to finish it all together”.
Colleen, a cattle farmer from Douglas in the Northern Cape, said that riding together required that they “care for each other and be considerate … I think it was really good for our relationship”.
Capetonian Nicky, 50, said riding with Mikayla “was wonderful”.
Nicky was doing her second Absa Cape Epic while Mikayla was a first-timer.
“We didn’t have any issues, but she’s 24 and stronger than me so we had to deal with that,” said Nicky.
But Mikayla said she had noted how her mother got stronger as the race got longer “which shows that as you get older you get more endurance”.
She added that she had been very encouraged by the male riders who set aside their testosterone to encourage them and estimates that “90% of the guys complimented us”.
One of their main objectives was to raise money for the CANSA charity and Nicky said that they have raised around R150 000.
Only one other mother-and-daughter pairing has finished the Absa Cape Epic before – mother Joan Louwrens and daughter Mary Haw in 2008.