Cape Town Cycle Tour: Physio gives useful pre-race preparation tips

CapeTalk's Lester Kiewit speaks to Toni-Lynne Monger, a physiotherapist and clinical director of The Balance Group, about how one should pace oneself over the last few days ahead of the Cape Town Cycle Tour.

Listen below:

The Cape Town Cycle Tour takes place on Sunday, 9 March.

Nearly 30,000 cyclists will gather to ride 109 kilometres across Cape Town in the world's largest timed bicycle race while friends and family bring the gees and cheers of support at various points of the race.

RELATED: If you can't cycle on the day: Cape Town Cycle Tour's Prelude Challenge underway until 2 March

But how should one prepare to cycle this distance?

Monger says her advice isn't 'sexy or that popular', because she doesn't want people to try 'weird and wonderful things' before the race.

Monger advises that you want to 'avoid overloading yourself in preparation for the race' while doing more:

• Gentle stretching.
• Massaging - focus on loosening your hip, neck and back muscles.
• Walking and strolling: do it forward, backwards, toes out, toes in, crisscross - it opens your calves, stretches your ankle joints and balances out the other planes of movement in your system. 

"Don't go balls to the wall and try something new too much too strong before the race... Don't overtrain before the race," says Monger. 

RELATED: 11 tips to make it through Cape Town Cycle Tour like a champ on Sunday

Eating...

'Don't change your diet' is the key for Monger.

Adding something new to your diet might irritate your system and upset your body on the day.

It's all about recovery...

Monger suggests giving the body time to recover after the race.

"It's what people do afterwards; that's where we see too many people struggle with tendinopathy and that can happen if you're not conditioned for the race. But, the body is good at recovering if you give it the time to do so after a race like this."

Ideally, you should stay off the bike four to six weeks after the race, explains Monger.

You can also try: 

• Get a massage to relax your muscles.
• Stretch gently and avoid working out intensely after the race.
• Cold plunging or heading into a sauna.
• Getting into an Epsom salt bath.

For Monger, the golden rule is to 'be kind to your system' before and after the race.

Scroll up to the audio player to listen to the full conversation.