Sunday's Sprint

To Quote a face-book friend (Erik) : Heidi and Stephan must be the King and Queen of Gauteng-AR at the moment. The Kinetic events are always fun - and sunday was no exception. We ran a bit, cycled some VERRY pretty and uncongested singeltrack, got lost a little bit, found a lot of controls without stephan's help, zig-zagged accross two dams cos the kayak just wouldn't go straight, almost fell off the obstacles at the finish, and laughed a lot.

Dawn on one of the bike legs (lifted off big baboon's site)
Zu's grin was just as wide - now who won't want to race with girls with smiles this big??   :D

Lost in Da Bush

'Twas adventure racing time again, this time with one of my favourite teams, Lickety Split.

The weekend started with a fuel tanker that blocked the highway out of jozi, and Con swearing to never ever EVER go away on a weekend again.

But that was soon forgotten when we hit the open road and Adri took out pizza, cinnabon-ised muffins and cookies.

We arrived just in time for race briefing - then set up camp in Mankele's camp site.

Race started early on Saturday morning with a quick run to a mini-waterfall - would have been quicker if the mankele singletrack was plotted on the maps, though ...



We than transitioned on a cycle-leg that took us on some of mankele's sweetest singletrack, hike-a-biking up koppies and bundu-bashing through Lantanas. Here's the team (sans the photographer) discussing route options before we left the tar ...



We found controls 3 & 4 quickly. Here's Adri and Will dragging a bike up to control 4.


Control 5 was easy to spot - the paths leading there, less so. Here's Con & Adri running up to the control.


It was a bit of hike-a-biking up to control 6.



We couldn't find control 6 anywhere (we later found out it was about a kilometer off where it was supposed to be) so we took a picture to proof that we were there:


On to control 7, but that one was also misplaced. We heard afterwards that some teams phone the organiser, who directed them to the correct control. Here's some bikes of other teams also searching for the control:



K, so by this time we lost a little enthusiasm and decided that while we're unofficial anyway, we might as well just go for the 'cool' controls. We purified some river water, then headed off to 7. Found it quickly (and where it was supposed to be) and then on to 8 via a sweet singletrack-detour.

Here's will taking a nap at the top of the mountain, just before we clipped control 8.


And then it was a serious downhill that left the bikes with scorching hot disks at the bottom.



The we searched a parking lot for a control that ended up being in a tree about 50 m from the parking lot :(

Here's Adri at the river crossing (where we heard that the last cycle leg was cancelled)



A quick cycle to the transition, and on to the next hiking leg. We decided to go for a finish and a braai, rather than collecting all the points - so only collected one next to a river, and one at the top of the downhill course. Here's the view from the top of the world:


... and here's the whole team at teh finish - just before the sprint to the swimming pool.

Sunday's Kinetic Adventure

'Just for you', Heidi said, 'we've added lots of singletrack for the next Kinetic sprint'.

She knows me well. I prefer singletrack and technical climbs and juicy riding to boring district roads. My friends Dawn and Gail both share my idea of fun, so they joined me for Sunday's sprint.

The cycling leg started with lots of climbing, NICE downhills, a quick pump to protect the non-tubeless tyre from the rocks, going back to fetch a missed control.

Then a bit of running which included finding 3 'Run 1' controls on 'Run 2' maps.

Some more cycling which included AWESOME bits of singletrack, then another running leg which the walkie talkies mostly walked and talked - except when we saw the cameraman :)

(this, and the next picture, were lifted off kinetic's picture site, see more here)


A paddling leg on a totally unsteerable boat with 3 women drivers .... we t-boned and bumped the other boats (and ourselves) out of the way, and just as we learnnt how to steer the boat, it was time to take out.

Both my team members do agility with their dogs; both of them loved being on the 'people-agility' side of things for a change. Some help from another team (whose helmet we rescued while on the paddle) to get over the obstacles, and then a sprint up the stairs to the finish.

.... and for our effort we got some vouchers to go spend on products in the kenetic shop - here we are on the podium (possie 2)


What a great way to spend a Sunday morning!!!

'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.

adventure sprinting

When AdventureLisa phoned me to ask if i'd join their team for the kinetic sprint, I knew i was in trouble - both lisa and debbie are very strong runners, and i've been concentrating on cycling for a while. oh well, do it anyway!

There were 2 running legs, 2 cycling legs & an obstacle course. We could do it in any order, but not 2 cycling legs after another. We started with a short rogaine-style run through the centre, followed by a very pleasant cycle on some dirt-roads in the area. The next run-leg was urban-styl in a gym! Lisa ran 1 kay on a treadmill, I cycled 1 kay on a spinb-bicycle, and debbie paddled away on a rowing machine. was great to cheer my buddies (and members of competition teams) on while waiting for my own turn. The last cycle was quick and lovely with some singletrack thrown in. Lisa's a brilliant navigator, so finding the controls was a given :)

here's a picture of us afterwards - yes, that's us on the top of the podium!

Yoshimi battles the Pink Robots

When my adventure-buddy Gerard forwarded the Baron's email about the adventure race in KZN, I knew I was in trouble. It was about a month aftere Ride2Rhodes, and I haven't done much since. But I also don't know how to say no.

I've had some adventures with Pablo and Gerard and they're about the best people to go with on any adventure ... strong, lots of endurance, lots of patience, they both know how to navigate, they never get tired, and an excellent sense of humor - both of them. Gerard found the fourth team mate, a really good mountainbiker and, so i heard, an even better runner.

So Yoshimi was going to battle the pink robots again.

This race was going to be different: we would be our own support crew, with one team member driving the car while the others were racing - the driver would have his own set of control points to collect before meeting the team and swapping being a second, for being a racer again.

Teams would have to blog pictures of the controls. This would
- enable people at home to follow the racers progress
- minimise the need for marshals - if a team had a picture of them at a specific landmark, then the race organiser knew they were there
- force adventure racers to learn how to use technology! Yaaay!

Registered teams had about a week to figure out how on earth to blog their progress on http://arkzn4.blogspot.com/ - most of us used the travel-time down to PMB to figure this out.

At 6:00 on Saturday morning we received an sms telling us that we had to be at the Farmer's Market for the race briefing at 7. Aintree Lodge (where we camped) were very close to the start, so we had enough time to wander around the farmers market and breakfast on hot chocolate and huge vetkoek.

We received the instructions, and then had to go find the start of the race.

I was the second for the first leg - had to go find a shopping centre (car, boat on roof, bicycles on back, with trailer, through Pietermaritzburg without a map, first to the wrong centre, but DID manage to find the right one) to count the fish in the pond, and then drive to the first transition, get the bikes out, lube them, and wait for the team. They arrived in third place. We jumped on the bikes, and finally the race started for me as well. Some excellent navigation decisions by Gerard, some NICE downhills, quite a lot of climbing, and we arrived at the start of the paddle leg. only 2 members had to paddle, so I found myself seconding again ... we had to go take a picture of some or other waterfall somewhere, before driving to the next transition.

Wellll and THAT'S the reason why I’m not a navigator on adventure races! I got totally lost, finally found the waterfall after a whole lot extra kilometers, and arrived at the transition about 15 minutes after the paddlers.

We were still in third place, and while collecting pictures of controls, found Team Xtreme along the way. We teamed up with them and Gerard navigated us to the next transition point. It was about 30 kays, but mostly uphill, lots of Ride2Rhodes type riding often on non-existing or quickly-disappearing tracks, and it took us a very long time to get to the next transition.

Team Xtreme had a quicker transition, but our guys chased them down on the hike, and both teams came in just before dark. The transition to biking took a while, and we left shortly after Team Xtreme. I knew that we wouldn't catch them, or drop them on an uphill, and Gerard was the better navigator, so they wouldn't drop us before we found all the checkpoints, nor would they allow us to get away from them. They were far stronger than our team at this stage, cos their girl was doing the seconding and the previous long cycle-leg took some energy out of me. Some excellent navigation decisions from our navigator, a nice downhill or 2 and we lost them. They caught us again on a long never-ending climb, but luckily for us there was another 9slightly gnarly) downhill and we finally could get rid of them.

It was a toss-up between Gerard and myself about who was going to second the last leg, but I think I convinced him that I was more tired than he was, so I was the second again. It would have been an 8kay trail-run, but it was difficult to find the trails, and they decided to rather do a 21 kay road run. I loaded up the bikes, packed everything in, and then drove to the finish.... as i drove passed team Olympus (who also opted for the roadrun) it was -1° outside!

I pitched the tents (in that weather!) and then waited for team Olympus. Team Yoshimi arrived in second place!

This race format: seconding yourself:
- makes it much easier to enter a race - seconds are hard to find, and even harder to keep
- makes the race slightly cheaper - a dedicated second would probably have meant another vehicle had to go down
- was hard, because of the extra tasks that the seconds had to perform - finding shopping malls in a foreign town!
- changes the adventure into racing. I like adventure racing because of the variety - even though I’m not a strong paddler, I get to spend time on the water - but this time, we had to go with whatever race/second-combination was going to yield the best results for the team. This turned the adventure into a race (together with the much unexpected early lead)
- makes you appreciate dedicated seconds. Seconding is hard work! loading up bikes, unloading them, feeding them ...
- the changing of seconds was also hard - you'd come in from a race, but the next leg you are the second, so although you're hungry and tired, you immediately have to start looking after the other team members to get them out of transition as quickly as possible.


The blogging website couldn't handle all the traffic (the race organiser got warnings from Google saying that he's spamming the website!) but and it was great coming home after the race and experiencing the race through the other team's eyes! And it was great to have to learn how to blog from a cell phone - I'll know how to do this from a cellphone for next year's Ride2Rhodes :)