People sometimes ask me for tips before a Munga race.
I usually smile when they do.
Because advice about the Munga is a strange thing. It’s a bit like giving someone marriage advice or telling them what it feels like to kiss that hot girl for the first time. You can talk about it all you want, but until you are standing there yourself, dust in your nose, wind in your ears, and your bike leaning against your leg, it’s mostly just words.
And the Munga has a way of turning words into something else entirely.
When you’re a rookie lining up at the start of something like Munga Grit or the Full Munga, there’s a certain mystique around it. You’ve seen photos. You’ve read blogs. You’ve watched videos of people riding through sunsets and Karoo dust like they’re part of some epic Western.
Your imagination fills in the rest.
In your head, it’s a big adventure ride across beautiful gravel roads with a few tough moments thrown in for character building.
Reality, as the Karoo likes to remind us, is slightly different.
The first thing that is always true is this:
It will be tough.
Not the “this ride is tough but fun” type of tough.
The type where you stare at your front wheel at 2 a.m. and seriously wonder whether the wind has personal issues with you.
Which brings us to the second universal truth:
There will be wind.
Not a gentle breeze either. The kind of wind that feels like the Karoo itself has decided you are moving in the wrong direction and would like to correct that mistake.
Sometimes it pushes you. Often it pushes back.
Either way, it’s part of the deal.
The third truth is something foreign riders sometimes discover with mild shock:
South African gravel roads are not what Americans or Europeans call gravel roads.
Elsewhere, gravel can mean smooth, groomed farm roads.
In the Karoo, gravel can mean anything from a highway of dust to a field of rocks that looks like it was designed by a committee of angry geologists.
You will ride corrugations that rearrange your teeth.
You will ride sand that questions your steering skills.
And occasionally you’ll find a stretch so beautiful and smooth you think, “Ah, this is what they meant.”
For about three minutes.
After a few Mungas, people assume you must have collected some great secrets.
The truth is far simpler.
The best advice I can give is this:
Decide what you want from the ride.
Not what the guy next to you wants.
Not what Strava wants.
Not what the race website suggests.
Just you.
Do you want to finish?
Do you want to race?
Do you want to test yourself?
Do you want to see if the voice in your head that says you can’t is actually wrong?
Because the Munga has a strange way of giving you exactly the experience you bring to it.
If you chase the clock, it will become a race.
If you chase the horizon, it becomes something else entirely.
As an older rider—an old dog, if we’re honest—I’ve learned that the Munga isn’t really about the bike or the distance.
It’s about the long conversation you end up having with yourself somewhere between checkpoints.
Usually, around the time when the stars are out, the Karoo is quiet, and you realise the world is much bigger and simpler than it felt in the office two weeks earlier.
The old Stoics used to say something along the lines of:
Focus on what you can control.
On the Munga, that’s actually very easy.
You can control your pedalling.
You can control your attitude.
You can control whether you laugh when the wind hits you sideways again.
The rest?
The wind, the road, the Karoo, the darkness, all belong to the universe.
And the universe, much like the Karoo, doesn’t negotiate.
So my advice to rookies is simple.
Prepare well.
Start humble.
Respect the distance.
But most importantly, enjoy it.
Because the Munga is not just a race.
It’s an adventure.
The kind that leaves you dusty, tired, slightly broken… and somehow a little different when it’s over.
And that, I suspect, is why we keep coming back.