Charles Molapisi, MTN executive and passionate cyclist, turns gruelling endurance rides like L’Étape du Tour into a platform for personal growth and community upliftment in his home village. Picture supplied
There is a point on a long climb when the body begins negotiating with the mind. The legs hurt. The lungs protest. The road seems to rise endlessly into the distance and the sensible part of you starts asking why, exactly, you volunteered for this.
For Charles Molapisi, that point came somewhere along a 170km mountain ordeal in France, where the road climbed 5 400 metres and the reward for reaching the top was, quite simply, another climb.
It was his first taste of L’Étape du Tour, the amateur event that allows ordinary cyclists to experience one of the stages of the Tour de France.
Seventy thousand people had turned up from around the world. Molapisi was one of them.
