There are races.
And then there are experiences like The Munga.
When most people hear the name, they think first of the obvious things: the Karoo, endless gravel roads, dust hanging beneath moonlight, broken bodies, sleep deprivation, and distances so long they stop making sense. They think about suffering. About survival. About one of the toughest races on earth.
And all of that is true.
But after being part of this family for nearly ten years, I have come to believe that the real story of The Munga has very little to do with bicycles.
That may sound strange for a race built around bicycles.
Yet somewhere along the line, through vision, stubbornness, and something far more human than branding, Jack Black transformed The Munga into something bigger than an event. Bigger than sport. Bigger than finish lines.
He transformed it into a philosophy.
Your Journey, Your Story.
And perhaps no phrase has ever captured the soul of endurance racing more honestly.
Because The Munga is not only life-changing for those who line up at the start. In many ways, it has become just as meaningful for people who cannot ride at all. People watching from hospital beds. From chemotherapy wards. From lounge couches. From offices. From lives interrupted by loss, sickness, addiction, depression, grief, fear, or the thousand other storms life quietly throws at ordinary people.
Somehow, through dust, chain grease, and exhaustion, The Munga became a mirror.
People began seeing their own battles reflected in it.
Their own impossible road.
Their own Munga.
And perhaps nowhere is this spirit more beautifully reflected than in “They Ride Along,” a deeply personal initiative born from within the family itself. Shaped through the journeys of ordinary people who endured the unimaginable loss of children, the movement became far more than a cycling initiative. It became a philosophy of remembrance, healing, and survival. Its message is both simple and profound: the people we lose never truly leave us; they still ride along with us.
“They Ride Along” captures the very heartbeat of The Munga’s Your Journey, Your Story ethos, reminding us that everyone carries their own Munga through life, whether it is grief, sickness, addiction, depression, or trauma. Even those who never touch a bicycle become part of the journey, watching dots move across maps from hospital beds, lounge couches, or silent homes, finding the courage to continue fighting their own road forward.
Across the Karoo, riders carry names, memories, and photographs of loved ones, turning the race into something almost spiritual rather than merely competitive. Somewhere between the silence of the veld, the ache of exhausted legs, and the endless horizon, people begin to understand that endurance is not only physical.
It is emotional.
Spiritual.
Human.
One of those stories was Jan-Francis, fondly known as Poemie.
He passed away on Monday, 11 May 2026.
But before that, there was a Sword ride in Pretoria.
Jack had allowed him to ride his first Pretoria Sword even after he had just been discharged from hospital following an epileptic attack only days earlier. Most people would have stayed home. Most would have been told to rest.
Yet on that Saturday, Jan-Francis climbed onto a bicycle and rode 52 kilometres.
Not because it was easy.
Not because it made medical sense.
But because hope has a strange engine.
That day, somewhere along the route, Jan-Francis and I developed a friendship. And what stayed with me was not merely the ride itself, but the fire behind his eyes. The determination. The refusal to surrender completely to circumstance.
After his second brain operation, he never truly made it back onto the road again. But he still climbed onto his stationary bike at home. Even recently, after pedalling for barely ten minutes, he spoke about needing to train for next year’s Pretoria Sword.
There is something profoundly human in that.
Perhaps even sacred.
Because maybe that is what The Munga really gives people: not medals, not war stories, not social media photographs, but permission to believe there could still be another start line ahead.
Even when life says otherwise.
The great sportswriter Grantland Rice once wrote that it is not whether you won or lost, but how you played the game. The Munga somehow stretches that idea even further. It whispers something different into the Karoo wind:
It is not whether you finish.
It is whether you dared to start.
Whether you kept moving when your world became dark.
Whether you fought your own road.
Because inspiration is contagious.
Courage spreads.
Hope travels.
Sometimes across 52 or 1,100 kilometres of dust.
The strange thing about The Munga is that long after the bicycles are packed away and the trackers are switched off, the real race continues elsewhere. In hospital rooms. In marriages. In recovery clinics. In grief. In loneliness. In people trying one more time after life knocked them flat.
And perhaps that is why this race endures.
Not because it is the toughest race on earth.
But because it quietly reminds broken people that they are far tougher than they think.
Rus sag, Poemie. Mag jy ver en mooi paaie in die hemel ry.