'uge no more

received an email this morning from one of the most adventurous adventure race directers in gauteng the last few years. 'Uge events will not present any more adventure races. The organisers have careers and other things to focus on now.

they will be missed.

my first longer AR was one of their events - a 150 in Botshabello - they wanted to stop the race during a rainstorm after a freezing leg on a canal, but graciously allowed us to continue. Other teams were stuck on the dam, but they handled everything without a glitch.

there was an event in the drakensberg with a rock-climb at night, and abseiling off it, followed by en epic night-hike in a stunning forest. an orienteering leg when no-one could keep their eyes open any more. some cycling high up in a mountain.

there was taking a blind guy through grootkloof to see if he would manage the worst that a race director could throw at us when we were contemplating doing an AR with him (we couldn't do that due to date clashes - but it was because of an event that they were planning to put up, that we had that unforgettable experience)

there was getting sick after some tubing - and then jumping into - the jukskei, there was island-hopping in parys somewhere, some kloofing in krugersdorp - that one had some gnarly rocky descents on the bike-leg and an ice cream-stop in town - there was an event right in the middle of joburg with rhymes for clues - running and cycling without a map (we lost it and checked other competitor's maps every time we saw someone) around pretoria on a saturday morning - that was the event in memory of philip - A checkpoint in a cave somewhere near - krugersdorp? a sprint in parys with some hair-raising rock-climbing (for non-climbers) up the devil's chimney... a 65 event last year about this time with probably around 20 punctures, convincing some team members to convert to tubeless

the memories they gave us!

there will be other adventure racing events and organisers - the kinetic events were fun this year, and there are talk of longer events - but 'uge will certainly leave a gap in the calendar.


a 'uge thank you to the 'uge guys and girls who allowed us to be fully alive.