‘Picture someone with a machete trying to cut through a jungle,’ says Simon Jones. ‘That’s what we were doing for 30km, trying to descend out of this rainforest.’
If that’s how the Dubliner who managed to finish 15th overall in this year’s Race Around Rwanda sums up the route’s more difficult – scratch that: borderline impassable – sections, then you can be sure he wasn’t alone.
‘People were posting in the group chat asking if they’d gone the wrong way,’ he adds. ‘Because Rwanda is developing so quickly, some roads that were gravel a year ago are now paved. So the organisers just have to keep finding gnarlier sections to keep it at 400km of gravel.’
The Race Around Rwanda, first held in 2020, aims to cover 40% of its near-1,000km route on gravel as it takes in an anti-clockwise lap of Rwanda from Kigali, the capital. The other 600km is on tarmac, and the route takes in nearly 18,000m of elevation gain.
The smooth, rich, red gravel roads you see here are typical. When it rains hard though, as it often does just a few degrees south of the equator, they can turn into what feels like a vertical mudslide.
From Kigali, the route heads east, then north to the Twin Lakes – a pair of crater lakes bordering each other at the base of the Mount Muhabura – before cutting west across verdant, rolling hillsides, around volcanic national parks, through tea plantations and then south to the mountainous Nyungwe Forest. Four checkpoints offer basic lodging and warm meals but beyond that the event is fully self-supported and has a time limit of six days.
A total of 85 riders started the 2023 Race Around Rwanda in Kigali at around 4am on 5th February, and over the following pages we hear from four of them. But before we do, let’s get some more facts out of the way. Of those 85 starters, 60 finished the event.
Rwanda’s lowest point is at about 950m above sea level, with much of the racing at 2,000m or above. Yes, it’s safe – in fact, the World Economic Forum rated Rwanda inside their top ten safest countries as recently as 2017. No, you don’t get to see any gorillas en route.
Here, then, is the story of the 2023 Race Around Rwanda, from some of the people who rode it.
Simon Jones
Age 25, From Dublin, Ireland, 15th overall
‘On the first day I did 370km, riding from 4am until just after midnight, and slept for two hours. Then about 4pm the following day I had a 20-minute nap and felt good. I went into this shop and bought every bottle of Coke they had and my first ever Red Bull. I typically don’t use caffeine but in my head it was like: top ten or die trying.
‘By the time I got to Checkpoint 3 (CP3) it was 7pm. The guy asked, “Would you like a room?” I should have known from his reaction that saying no was a bad idea. Still, off I went into the night, and that’s when the route got insane.
‘There was a 70km section that on normal gravel would take maybe three hours. It took me eight or nine. They have these bridges made of parallel wooden logs. In the rain, these logs are completely slick, and at night you can’t see them, so you’re bombing down a descent and all of a sudden you see these black lines. If you hit one of those, you’re finished.
‘I managed to catch the pack fighting for top ten but with 70km to go to CP4 my brain started to go really weird. All I had thought about for 12 hours was coming tenth and now I was wondering, “Why am I still in my cycling kit? I came tenth. The race is over.” Yet my phone was saying I still had 200km to Kigali.
‘I got to 30km before CP4 and collapsed on the side of the road, so I got a taxi to the next checkpoint.
‘Imagine a confused foreigner with heatstroke came up to you in London and said they wanted to go to Brighton because they were trying to get to Birmingham. It ended up with about 15 or 20 locals discussing where I must have actually wanted to go. They eventually got it, but they wanted to know why. I was like, “Ah, so I can cycle back here.” And the whole thing started over again.’
Caroline Buckland
Age 32, from London, DNF
‘Three days in, at around 650km, we hit a rainstorm so this French couple and I found a derelict building. There were these strips of bark, which we laid on the floor as a makeshift bed. You can see the spiders underneath, but at that point you don’t care. I stayed for three hours until it stopped raining at 1am, but my freehub had given up so I had to walk out of the rainforest and get three buses back to Kigali.
‘I presumed I was out of the race, and that was a really rocky moment. I looked awful. I’d been sleeping in my kit and smelled awful. I had a good cry on this bus, which was absolutely jammed, even at 4am. When I waved it down, the driver said, “No, we’re not taking the bike.” I had to beg.
‘Back in Kigali I found a mechanic who could fix my bike, and went for a shower. I had the start of trench foot because I’d been wearing my cycling shoes for 30 hours and tried to sleep in them. Then I got a taxi back to the point where I’d caught the first bus 17 hours earlier.
‘Going through the rainforest at night was amazing. I caught up with the second group, and I was about to press on for the second night in a row, but my freehub went again about 90km from the end.
‘I was in the middle of a village at midnight. I didn’t have the tools I needed so there was nothing I could do. A moped taxi came round at about 4am and I managed to hail it down. So I’m on the back of this moped with my bike upside down on my lap, with the bars digging into my thighs. Then I had to get a bus back to Kigali. At that point I just thought, I’m going to call it.’
Violette Neza
Age 21, from Kigali, Rwanda, 1st woman (9th overall)
‘I came out of CP4, walking and riding through the forest in heavy rain. I shivered until I was frozen. It was midnight and I’d stopped in a village, looking for something – anything – to warm me up. I curled up in a ball. A family came and asked how they could help. They were very surprised to see a Rwandan girl riding a bike through the night and keeping up with the guys. To them it was like a miracle.
‘They asked if they could take care of me, but I told them, “It’s an unsupported race, I don’t think it’s allowed.” So they said, “If you don’t want to join us in our house, we can stand with you here.” I sat there shivering for almost an hour, then I called the organiser to see if it would be OK.
‘His response was simple: “Health is first.” The villagers took me inside, made porridge for me, gave me a big coat and made a fire. I slept in the chair for almost three hours. Before I left, they took my bottles from my bike and poured porridge inside.
‘Soldiers stopped me twice. The first time they asked me, “Why are you here? Who gave you permission?” Like the villagers, they were surprised to see a girl riding through the night. I gave them the organiser’s number, but there was no signal. Fortunately it helped that I could speak to them in Kinyarwanda. The second time they searched my bags. I said, “I’m going to lose my position in the race!” In the end they wished me luck, but also told me, “Don’t come back again.”’
‘I was cold and sick, and I nearly gave up. But I made a promise to myself. I did it. I want to tell girls: we are powerful; we have to be fearless.’
Elijus Čivilis
Age 41, from Vilnius, Lithuania, 1st overall
‘I’ve done 24-hour races many times. One night is easy – we can all go out on Friday, have a fantastic party and keep on going through Saturday. But the whole magic is the second night. It’s just 1,000km. It’s doable.
‘In ultra races you can, without alcohol or chemical substances, go to the borders of your mental perception. It’s fantastic. You are descending and your front light will throw out shadows that seem like animals, like people, like anything you can imagine. I’ve seen many elephants that turned out not to be there at all.
‘It’s quite scary because you don’t understand what is happening and you’re not capable of properly assessing your environment. And that’s dangerous. Luck has to be with you too because real animals are on the road – there are a lot of monkeys.
‘It got dark at around 6.30pm and most people go to sleep early, so you spend a lot of time alone in the dark. At a certain point your mind switches and gets with the flow of the experience. I started to feel like I wasn’t riding my bike – it was riding on its own. But then, next to me, my kids were riding together with my best friend. And I started chatting to them. I knew it wasn’t real but I knew I could use what I was feeling to stave off the urge to stop and sleep. I know it’s crazy but it helped process my emotions.
‘I finished in just less than 50 hours and, honestly, I felt nothing. You just stop riding. Where is the emotion? The sense of achievement? I called my family, who were all in the car on the school run. Hearing my wife’s voice, that’s when I started crying. I couldn’t really speak. She understood. That was the finish line for me.’
Entering the Race Around Rwanda costs from €270 (around £240). The 2024 date is yet to be confirmed but you can visit racearoundrwanda.com for details and updates
great to see another article about these types of event – at once scary and off-putting and at the same time full of deep admiration for those that put themselves through the edge of their consciousness and physical envelopes.