Over the last few days of March, Todd Helmick took a 600-mile trip through the South African countryside, from Cape Town to the town of Knysa.

&uot;I had no clue it would be so mountainous,&uot; he remembers. &uot;I thought the area was flat. But I was glad, because I love mountains.&uot;

He better have; he spent the next week biking all the way back.

A resident of Newport News and five-year veteran of the Suffolk Fire Department – he’s currently stationed at Station Three on White Marsh Road after almost four years at Station One on Market Street – Helmick was introduced to biking in the fall of 2000 by his wife Nicole.

&uot;I was looking for something to occupy my time,&uot; he said. &uot;Then I just fell in love with mountain biking. Before that, I’d been a city slicker, but then I realized how much I loved

being outdoors.&uot;

He went from riding for an hour a day to seven or eight. He started heading out to Charlottesville or Harrisonburg to check out their high points. He joined the East Coast Trek Volkswagen Factory Racing Team, and started riding as a professional – and winning! In 2004, he was ranked among the country’s best by the National Offroad Biking Association (NORBA).

In November, Helmick attended a training camp and Clemson University in North Carolina. A biking buddy, Chris Eatough, himself a marathon (24-hour race) biking champion, told Helmick about the Cape Epic. The largest full-scale mountain bike stage race in the world, it was eight days and 900 kilometers long, requiring a cumulative climb of over 16,000 vertical meters.

Never having been outside the country, Helmick decided to give it a pedaling. He began riding for hours at a time on back-to-back days. The week before the African event, he flew over to Phoenix for the Nova NORBA marathon, in which he rode 83 miles in five hours to get accustomed to the heat, which Helmick expected to rise into the triple digits in Africa.

After a 30-hour flight, Helmick landed in Cape Town on March 29. Then he rode to Knysa and met his riding partner, Tim Brink, himself a Cape Town resident.

&uot;I got all my stuff together and recovered from jet lag,&uot; he says.

On April 2, he and the nearly 900 other racers made it to the starting line.

&uot;I was kind of floored by how big it was,&uot; he remembers. &uot;I didn’t expect there to be so many people. I knew I was physically prepared to do almost anything, but the competition was scary.&uot;

Then they were off. The first day, it rained. The rest of the time, the temperature stayed around 101 degrees.

From 8 a.m. to 6 p.m. every day, with no break for lunch, the riders hit the roads. They slept in tents and nearby bed and breakfasts. Along the way, they raced past cheetahs and other wildlife.

They started off through the Knysna Forest, the largest indigenous forest in South Africa. They passed the Outeniqua mountain range and Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University. They saw the Sleeping Beauty mountain peak, the Langeberg Mountain and the town of Franschhoek, South Africa’s gourmet food and wine capital.

&uot;At every town we raced into, there was a party thrown for us,&uot; he says. &uot;There were children lined up watching us, and dances being thrown.&uot;

On April 9, they finally pulled into the Spier Wine Estate in Cape Town. After starting far back in the pack, Helmick and Brink finished 35th.

&uot;I didn’t want it to end,&uot; Helmick says. &uot;I was treated so well by the whole racing organization.

&uot;It was just an amazing experience overall,&uot; he continued. &uot;I’d like to go back and do it again. It’s the biggest thing I’ll ever do.&uot;

For a while, at least; in July, he plans to go north to Quebec to compete at the World Police and Fire Games. One of the most attended events in the world, it’s a chance for all law enforcement and fire department personnel from around the globe to battle it out in several athletic events.

&uot;I’ve got my fingers crossed,&uot; he says. &uot;I want to win a world championship.&uot;