Jodi Zulberg has raced almost everything that endurance sport can throw at someone: Comrades; Ironman World Championships; Gravel World Championships; The Munga. She has excelled at most with an impressive string of results, including seventeen South African national titles to her name, across road, time trial, triathlon and gravel.
No surprise that as soon as she heard about Nedbank Gravel Burn, with an Assos leader jersey up for grabs in each age category, she was in! She didn’t disappoint. In the hotly contested 45-49 category, she finished third, despite a serious ankle injury sustained in the latter half of the race. When entries opened for 2026, without hesitation, she signed up.
Yet when she speaks about Nedbank Gravel Burn, she does not mention results and ambitions. It is about how the week feels.
“It is a very special hybrid – adventure, toughness and racing, all rolled into one,” she says.
“Most races settle into a pattern and you have a sense of what each day looks like, as a challenge.” Yet she soon realised that at Nedbank Gravel Burn, there is so much more going on. In the race, one stage might be tactical and fast, watching wheels and managing gaps, the next it’s checking the wind or finding a rhythm across a stretch of Karoo that feels far bigger than the race itself. “And then you ride into Burn Camp where the tents are set in circles around the fire. The same riders we were racing earlier in the day sat down, side by side, there’s a world famous rider over here and another over there…” For that week everyone, from Olympic gold medalists to the keen amateurs, lives in the middle of the Karoo for a week, sharing the stories of the day and enjoying evenings around the fires.
“It is a full week of WHO KNOWS WHAT COMES NEXT and LETS GO OUT AND SMASH IT ANYWAY then CHILL!”
That sense of the unknown defined Edition #1 and remained imprinted in Jodi’s memory. One of the stages was neutralised because of extreme wind. She remembers, “Riders were leaning into the crosswinds together in echelons, we switched from fierce racing to helping each other through a very long 143km day.” With no podium to fight for or GC to climb up, the stage was all about getting through something wild, side by side.
Her background in triathlon gives her a useful comparison. “In Ironman, the parameters are fixed. You know the distances, you know the clock, and on most days the strongest athlete wins. Gravel is harder to contain. Terrain, wind and positioning all interfere with your neat calculations, and sometimes the race is decided as much by how you read the day as by how strong you are. It’s about feeling it.”
As a teenager, none of this looked likely.
She struggled with anorexia and severe body image issues. A doctor once told her she was going to die from the disease. Sport eventually became her structure and a way of rebuilding strength rather than shrinking into herself. It led her into cognitive behavioural sciences, a field in which she now works with those facing eating disorders.
Her three sons have grown up alongside this version of her. They often travel with her and watch her race. She hopes what they see is not just performance, but the decision to keep showing up and to do something hard. That matters.
Looking ahead to the 2026 edition, she has a firm understanding of the demands of the race. When asked what she is most looking forward to in 2026, “Everything. I would love it to be exactly as last year.”