Booksology South African cycling legend Cathy Carstens has written a compelling memoir and the subtitle to her book, Getting Back on the Bike, sums it up perfectly — a journey of grit, grace and rising up again.
Carstens grew up in Bethlehem where her father established a veterinary surgery.
On trips to farms in the area she would assist her father by passing him the instruments or medication he needed.
When he was almost done she would run ahead on the farm roads until he caught up with her in the car.
This is where her love of running started. But one day while running on the farm roads she suddenly fell to the ground. Her foot had gone out of alignment and the force travelled up her leg, dislocating her kneecap.
With many therapy sessions over the years she realised at a young age that she wanted to become a physiotherapist.
At varsity she excelled in athletics, but when a car accident injured her knee again, it also shattered her running dreams.
She felt a deep loss being unable to simply exercise and having to rely on people for lifts to classes.
Her physiotherapist suggested she start cycling and the bicycle “became my ticket to freedom”, opening so many doors.
In the 80s Carstens was one of the few female cyclists competing in a mostly male-dominated sport.
The discrepancies were noticeable in various aspects, and especially in the huge differences in prize-money men and women received.
Despite the setbacks she went on to dominate several well-known cycling races and, with others, fought for recognition for women in the sport.
Carstens’s resilience is inspiring. She tells how over the years other injuries and accidents affected her cycling career.
She also left competitive cycling to raise a family, only to get back on the bike in her 40s, going on to compete professionally again.
Her memoir is beautifully written and can easily be devoured in one sitting.
In between she breaks away from talking about her cycling career and writes about family cycling trips abroad.
Her experiences are fascinating and you can feel the angst when she talks about a cycling trip in Europe with her husband where, after disembarking from the train, they couldn’t find their bikes.
She had seen her bike being offloaded and after three hours of arguing with authorities, the bikes mysteriously reappeared. Hers being a racing bike, it was obviously a hot ticket item.
After eating a bad chicken dish in Greece she suffered from food poisoning for 10 days, and medicine wasn’t helping clear the bug.
A pathologist they met at a camp in Switzerland said she must take a shot of the Italian bitters, Fernet-Branca. She describes it as tasting like the South African witblits and it instantly cleared the “lurgy”.
Carstens also talks about her journey to becoming a consciousness coach. She tells how she gained so much more by giving to others.
She writes: “Through all of life’s changes, my bicycle remained my faithful companion — just as it had been since those early days.
“Whether training at dawn, competing in events or simply riding to clear my mind, cycling continues to teach me about resilience, adaption and the importance of moving forward no matter what life presents.
“Sometimes the greatest victories aren’t the ones that come with medals, but the ones that come from simply getting back on the bike and continuing forward.”
