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Saturday, November 7, 2009
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Tuesday, November 3, 2009
Capestorm Rogaine - Event Preview
Only three members of Lickety Split will be going through to this year’s Capestorm rogaine. Mike and William will join up as team Lickety Vets (as this is the first race William is doing as a Veteran). Adri will be joining us for the foot event.
Lickety Vets are doing both the 6hr foot on the Saturday and the 5hr MTB on the Sunday. Last time Mike and William did the Foot Rogaine we found a wonderful gorge to climb/crawl through and this time we won’t be doing anything different. Our goal will be to take a peaceful stroll through the environment looking for neat spots to have an adventure in. Adri who does not have a team for the event will be joining us just for fun.
We will be taking the MTB event on the Sunday a little more seriously, in other words we won’t purposefully get ourselves lost at a small mountain pool we happen to find along the way. Our goal is to cover between 50 and 70 kms (dependant on terrain), starting at the furtherest point we can find and working our way back as fast as possible.
The 24 Hour - Preview Ride
As a team Lickety Split would like to enter this year’s 24 hour MTB event – it is “good training” for next year’s Swazi X which is currently our major target event. After the disaster that we had at last year’s Maropeng race (horrible course, cheaters, wind, etc) we decided it would be a good idea to go and see what the terrain for this year’s event would be. Four of us went on a trip to Rietvlei farm and joined up with Wendal, the course designer, to see what the route was like.
First off let me state that I love long open dirt roads for riding, I am not a “fan” of single-track and technical riding. I do them (and would consider myself an average rider) because they form part of MTB events. The 24 hour at Northern Farm was to me the perfect 24 hour route – easy riding, non-technical etc.
Rietvlei is rather small, and a winding route has been graded out of the grass for the first few kilometres. This will be great for spectators to be able to see the riders for quite a while, but does give people that want to cheat an opportunity to do so. After the winding graded route, the trail enters the technical single track routes through the koppies and wooded copses of the farm. I feel that this section gives little opportunity to overtake, however many of my team members disagreed with me. Once through the single track sections the route comes down quickly off the high ground and winds through the woodlands before entering the flat section that will contain the start.
While the route is reasonably technical it can be tackled by anyone. The better riders will be challenged to keep a high pace going, while the beginner riders will find the route difficult but doable.
There is no way that I would want to tackle the route as a solo rider. But as part of a team I think the route will be great.
Our thanks to Wendel for allowing us entry early onto the property and showing us the route. We will be back to visit Rietvlei as a training venue.
Wednesday, October 28, 2009
Not-cake (ginger tart) recipe
Here is the long awaited recipe:
Ginger Tart
Base:
1 Pkt Ginger Nuts
90 g Butter – melted
Crumb the biscuits and mix together, press flat into baking tin and bake @180 untill evenly brown and crisp about 8 – 10 minutes
Filling:
½ cup Golden Syrup
1 ½ cups water
2 level tablespoons Custard Powder
1 tsp ground ginger or more if preferred
1 level dspn gelatine
Heat syrup & water in saucepan until dissolved. Mix custard powder with small amount, add water and ginger.
Stir into syrup and cook until thickened and transparent. Mix 1 level dspn gelatine in cold water and stir into mixture.
Pour into shell and allow to set.
Decorate with cream
Too make it a bit stronger, I sometimes use less water and more ginger.
Monday, October 26, 2009
William turns 40
William turned 40 on October the 7th. One of the Cairns Family traditions is a sporting challenge between the four brothers on important birthdays, so William challenged his brothers to a mountain bike race, of course the whole of the AR team was also invited.
The day after the birthday was the weekly Dark and Dirty in which much not-cake was eaten.
William and Team Lickety Split entered the Dirt Festival 40km Race, while only one of William’s brothers (Pete) managed to enter the 20km race. William’s cousin Patrick also entered the 20km race. William’s average speed for the 40km race was 18km/h, Pete only managed a measly 13.3km per hour for the 20km, clearly putting William as the winner of the challenge....
After the cycle race everyone went to William’s house for lunch. A different sort of not-cake was enjoyed by everyone. Promise – the not-cake recipe will be posted sometime....
Tuesday, October 20, 2009
ARKZN - Race Report - By Adri
So we’ve been nagged for about 3months to do a report on our KZN race in July this year. Not because we maybe came second or finished.. but mostly about our “pub experience”. So amongst other useful & entertaining bits of info, you will find the pub story.
KZN AR Race report : 18 & 19 July Race organiser: George Forder A 18-24hour adventure race with a total distance of about 120km starting in Pietermaritzburg and incorporated Hilton, the Midlands and KZN's local businesses. Teams were self-seconding and seconds also had to collect some checkpoints and photographs to post to the race blog where George could keep track of everyone’s whereabouts. On the technical side a great idea, but some pics and sms’s are still in cyberspace.
Team: Lickety Split & Lickety Click (with 2 men and 1 woman each) but in the end racing together as a team of 6, but 2 always seconding the team. Meaning: fast, quickly, without delay, like a blue streak, like a flash, like a house on fire, like a shot, like a streak, like greased lightning, like the wind, like wildfire. …but we like the definition “informal”…and yes, we are from Gauteng.
So we heard of “George’s” races and how you should expect anything & everything to be part of the adventure. Great, anything unexpected is and adventure. Distance & discipline breakdown were as follows:
With George soothing our ears weekly with his creative writing before the race, a lot of the race info was actually written between the lines. As well as clues about maps, a “town crier” and the starting point. We decided to camp at the Midmar Dam the night before as we suspected that the paddling leg would happen in that area. One car already left the Friday morning and the second the Friday afternoon. Frequent calls were made from 1 to 2 asking where are you and showing us what camp looks like. What we really saw is that they already wore most of the clothing they owned just after sundown. Eek, problem. But car no 2 had the dinner: Spaghetti Bolognaise, which gave the “frozen” gas bottle a hard time. But we had dinner, put on everything we owned, measured temperature below zero and went to bed as the start was at 7am. And the sms with details about the starting point promised at 6am. The night was looooong, very cold and filled with semi-conscious vows of never camping in the winter next to a dam, or camping the night before a race. We measured -2 degrees during the night. One of the guys was so taken by the stars, that he opted to sleep outside under the open skies, after which we almost had to chip away the ice from him in the morning. Saturday morning 6h00 Midmar Dam:
Contrary to our team name definition of “without delay” we got up, shook the ice off the tents, cars & equipment, packed up camp and made our way to Pietermaritzburg to the “farmers market in Alexandra street” where we had to meet the “town crier” for our race packs & instructions. Passing teams on their way back from the starting point, we knew we were late. (And we saw their photos after the race of eating filled vetkoek at the market, 6h30 in the morning) And first words from the well-dressed, charming “town crier” confirmed exactly that: “Lickety Split, you’re late.” Click-take-the-pick with the town-crier and we head off to start the first hiking leg. A couple of maps from George which we had to join and then together with our downloaded 1:50 000 maps we set off.
Pietermaritzburg is beautiful, maybe because it is green in winter, but also maybe because George took us on the scenic & tourist route collecting points at local attractions and some important places for our South African history. Seeing World’s View really opened our AR-hearts again to the beauty of our country and re-affirming why we enter these events. Seeing so far and realising that Maritzburg is way bigger than we thought. The 2 team members in the cars had to do a number of tasks like count goldfish. “They would not stay still and as soon as you got them lined up, would swim merrily around the corner out if sight. We must have come up with 3 different (final) totals.”
At the first transition point we swop, drivers now onto their bikes with the others to meet again at the Midmar Dam. 2 Not-so-fresh drivers to collect points from Peel’s Honey, Hi-Fly Kites... all great places to visit again when in the Meander! Cars were allowed GPS, but the local tourist map also had these clearly marked.
So we meet at the dam for the paddling leg. Waited a while and saw some other teams come and go. The seconds at that time, thought it best to take the K2 as far as possible down to the dam to give the tired legs a head-start. Only 2 needed for the paddle. Weather balmy... good strong man in the boat... with a strong lady paddler and a fairly easy distance with collecting checkpoints on the surf.
The other 4 now to drive around the dam and meet them on the other side… only to get onto the wrong side of the dam… a bit of flapping and circling and then we meet up with about 3 other teams transitioning at the same time. Now around 14h00 and the net leg is cycling of, according to George’s estimates, shortest distance 17km and longest 35km to transition again at the Everglade Hotel. Experience is really valuable as it was here that the old AR-racers warned us to dress up warm at 2 in the afternoon, coz once the sun is down, it is still winter – no matter if we are absolutely boiling at this point. Slowly climbing up a dirt road, passing farmers, local cyclist giving us a go on our bikes… we are heading for the hills. Next checkpoint is in the Mondi plantations. So we go up and up and the sun is going down on the other side. Thank you to our more “senior” members in the team, because here we started taking the warmer gear out. On the top: beautiful plantations with lots of new & old gravel roads used by forestry… So we head down… nice down hills. Not knowing at this point yet that we were not suppose to go down, but rather go left and travel on the top all the way up to Everglades (East). Anyway, so we go down… which was North and then we go left at the stream. At this point matched the markings on our maps. Unfortunately topographical maps don’t help you much at night!?! Admitting, here we were pretty much just following the road to the next road marking to place ourselves on the map. Clocking over 30kms here already. At its getting colder, later, less snacks, less water… not looking good. We make some more turns up and down the plantations and eventually we stop… We’re lost. Officially lost. Unfortunately at this point one of the girls faced the consequences of racing with underwear (bottoms). Consulting the rest of the team, they all unanimously confirmed that you never race with underwear… male or female. Pen knife did the trick here.
We get cellphone signal, phone our team mates at Everglades and share our lost-status. They are now bragging about log-fires and beer. So we take out the GPS phone (which was warning us about the battery power) and after a few attempts, we get the coordinates, and send them back to Everglades where George is also trying to locate us.
George’s account of this was: “Back at the JOC, (Joint Operations Centre) which is what Everglade hotel was becoming, we had out laptops, Google Earth and numerous GPS's trying to find and recover the three lost teams. The air was crackling with ozone and sulphur as cell phones and satellite and radio waves flew.”
With renewed hope, we head off and reach some more prominent roads and a sawmill: Dargle. Up the road and we get a no-entry sign. So we go down again to the sawmill and make the last call… They’re coming to get us. We find ourselves a newly-built guard’s house where we are going to stay put. The dog next door reminded us for the next half hour that we are not suppose to be there.
Status: 22h00 and zero degrees.
One taillight on outside and we’re inside on cold concrete.. sharing the last crumbs of the day’s snacks, taking out emergency blankets, coz we didn’t know how long this wait was going to be. About 30 minutes, George and our 2 vehicles reach us and we head off.
George’s version again: “Comment of the race award must go to Lickety Split. "We know where we are, We are at the Dargle". For the Out of Towners the Dargle is an are of about 4 000 000 km square excluding Durban and stopping just short of Barbeton, I think. Upper Dargelites speak in posh English accents and wear tweeds, whilst lower Dargle is a seething mass of Voodoo and bongo drums. There are 45 000 Dargle signs spread over this area. A very honest mistake.”
In the cars we hear of another team already at the Nottingham Road hotel having warm food & beer and that is where we’re heading now. A rather long drive and we get to this:
…which is a checkpoint that one of the other team s already posted. But happy to be amongst civilisation, we get to Nottingham Road and see lots of cars. It is freezing cold outside and in our rugged gear we run for the door. Hearing loud music we are very positive about our hot meal and logfire. Get to the front door and waiting for the others, we spot someone’s dinner & drinks on the floor next to the front door. Open the door and it looks like a matric holiday party. Young, very young, very loud, very drunk. So we run for the open table at the back.
Status: 1 Log fire next to 2 rather drunk old men, NO hot food, outsiders.
Not much time needed for everyone to agree that we don’t belong here. No jewellery and aftershave left after our 15 hour excursion. So we leave after the second song. So this was our Nottingham Hotel Pub experience… Expectation and disappointment are closely linked.
Now heading to Highmoor Nature Reserve which is the finishing point, but also our camp site for the evening. What a great feeling when we drove past the leading team on their last run/hike leg towards Higmoor, looking strong. (Envy, envy…) It felt like the longest drive of our lives. Thinking every 10 minutes, it must be just around the corner. A very long private cement road rolling for at least 8kms is what the teams still had to finish with and we were knackered just driving it!
We reach campsite… meet George and his family and some other teams that were also fished out. Long awaited ablution and hot showers nowhere to be found.. as we found out the next morning that we were actually camping on the picnic site! Real campsite with facilites were about 300m away on the next hill.
With the tents up and water almost boiling, everyone huddles around a picnic table, waiting for the teams to come in. George confirmed that only 3 of the 7 teams were still in the race. Here we get the maps out and trace our steps back to where we lost the plot… but “die koeël is deur die kerk”.
With excitement and applause the first team finished in 18hours and 20 minutes – the cut off at 24hours.
Official Finishers were: 1. Team Olympus 2. Team Yoshimi 3. Team Xtreme
What we did not get to was the cozy Everglades Hotel, the top of the Ihlazane, the Umgeni Vlei (Source of the Umgeni River), Kamberg Bushmans art centre and the last rolling hills up to Highmoor.
What we did get to that was bigger than the race itself, is spending time with others. Getting to know them, what drives them, what slows them down, allergies, interesting hobbies & talents and the endless thankyou’s for biltong and last sweeties that still gets shared.
This is the blog of the racers who recorded their journey: http://sites.google.com/site/arkzn4/home
KZN AR Race report : 18 & 19 July Race organiser: George Forder A 18-24hour adventure race with a total distance of about 120km starting in Pietermaritzburg and incorporated Hilton, the Midlands and KZN's local businesses. Teams were self-seconding and seconds also had to collect some checkpoints and photographs to post to the race blog where George could keep track of everyone’s whereabouts. On the technical side a great idea, but some pics and sms’s are still in cyberspace.
Team: Lickety Split & Lickety Click (with 2 men and 1 woman each) but in the end racing together as a team of 6, but 2 always seconding the team. Meaning: fast, quickly, without delay, like a blue streak, like a flash, like a house on fire, like a shot, like a streak, like greased lightning, like the wind, like wildfire. …but we like the definition “informal”…and yes, we are from Gauteng.
So we heard of “George’s” races and how you should expect anything & everything to be part of the adventure. Great, anything unexpected is and adventure. Distance & discipline breakdown were as follows:
With George soothing our ears weekly with his creative writing before the race, a lot of the race info was actually written between the lines. As well as clues about maps, a “town crier” and the starting point. We decided to camp at the Midmar Dam the night before as we suspected that the paddling leg would happen in that area. One car already left the Friday morning and the second the Friday afternoon. Frequent calls were made from 1 to 2 asking where are you and showing us what camp looks like. What we really saw is that they already wore most of the clothing they owned just after sundown. Eek, problem. But car no 2 had the dinner: Spaghetti Bolognaise, which gave the “frozen” gas bottle a hard time. But we had dinner, put on everything we owned, measured temperature below zero and went to bed as the start was at 7am. And the sms with details about the starting point promised at 6am. The night was looooong, very cold and filled with semi-conscious vows of never camping in the winter next to a dam, or camping the night before a race. We measured -2 degrees during the night. One of the guys was so taken by the stars, that he opted to sleep outside under the open skies, after which we almost had to chip away the ice from him in the morning. Saturday morning 6h00 Midmar Dam:
Contrary to our team name definition of “without delay” we got up, shook the ice off the tents, cars & equipment, packed up camp and made our way to Pietermaritzburg to the “farmers market in Alexandra street” where we had to meet the “town crier” for our race packs & instructions. Passing teams on their way back from the starting point, we knew we were late. (And we saw their photos after the race of eating filled vetkoek at the market, 6h30 in the morning) And first words from the well-dressed, charming “town crier” confirmed exactly that: “Lickety Split, you’re late.” Click-take-the-pick with the town-crier and we head off to start the first hiking leg. A couple of maps from George which we had to join and then together with our downloaded 1:50 000 maps we set off.
Pietermaritzburg is beautiful, maybe because it is green in winter, but also maybe because George took us on the scenic & tourist route collecting points at local attractions and some important places for our South African history. Seeing World’s View really opened our AR-hearts again to the beauty of our country and re-affirming why we enter these events. Seeing so far and realising that Maritzburg is way bigger than we thought. The 2 team members in the cars had to do a number of tasks like count goldfish. “They would not stay still and as soon as you got them lined up, would swim merrily around the corner out if sight. We must have come up with 3 different (final) totals.”
At the first transition point we swop, drivers now onto their bikes with the others to meet again at the Midmar Dam. 2 Not-so-fresh drivers to collect points from Peel’s Honey, Hi-Fly Kites... all great places to visit again when in the Meander! Cars were allowed GPS, but the local tourist map also had these clearly marked.
So we meet at the dam for the paddling leg. Waited a while and saw some other teams come and go. The seconds at that time, thought it best to take the K2 as far as possible down to the dam to give the tired legs a head-start. Only 2 needed for the paddle. Weather balmy... good strong man in the boat... with a strong lady paddler and a fairly easy distance with collecting checkpoints on the surf.
The other 4 now to drive around the dam and meet them on the other side… only to get onto the wrong side of the dam… a bit of flapping and circling and then we meet up with about 3 other teams transitioning at the same time. Now around 14h00 and the net leg is cycling of, according to George’s estimates, shortest distance 17km and longest 35km to transition again at the Everglade Hotel. Experience is really valuable as it was here that the old AR-racers warned us to dress up warm at 2 in the afternoon, coz once the sun is down, it is still winter – no matter if we are absolutely boiling at this point. Slowly climbing up a dirt road, passing farmers, local cyclist giving us a go on our bikes… we are heading for the hills. Next checkpoint is in the Mondi plantations. So we go up and up and the sun is going down on the other side. Thank you to our more “senior” members in the team, because here we started taking the warmer gear out. On the top: beautiful plantations with lots of new & old gravel roads used by forestry… So we head down… nice down hills. Not knowing at this point yet that we were not suppose to go down, but rather go left and travel on the top all the way up to Everglades (East). Anyway, so we go down… which was North and then we go left at the stream. At this point matched the markings on our maps. Unfortunately topographical maps don’t help you much at night!?! Admitting, here we were pretty much just following the road to the next road marking to place ourselves on the map. Clocking over 30kms here already. At its getting colder, later, less snacks, less water… not looking good. We make some more turns up and down the plantations and eventually we stop… We’re lost. Officially lost. Unfortunately at this point one of the girls faced the consequences of racing with underwear (bottoms). Consulting the rest of the team, they all unanimously confirmed that you never race with underwear… male or female. Pen knife did the trick here.
We get cellphone signal, phone our team mates at Everglades and share our lost-status. They are now bragging about log-fires and beer. So we take out the GPS phone (which was warning us about the battery power) and after a few attempts, we get the coordinates, and send them back to Everglades where George is also trying to locate us.
George’s account of this was: “Back at the JOC, (Joint Operations Centre) which is what Everglade hotel was becoming, we had out laptops, Google Earth and numerous GPS's trying to find and recover the three lost teams. The air was crackling with ozone and sulphur as cell phones and satellite and radio waves flew.”
With renewed hope, we head off and reach some more prominent roads and a sawmill: Dargle. Up the road and we get a no-entry sign. So we go down again to the sawmill and make the last call… They’re coming to get us. We find ourselves a newly-built guard’s house where we are going to stay put. The dog next door reminded us for the next half hour that we are not suppose to be there.
Status: 22h00 and zero degrees.
One taillight on outside and we’re inside on cold concrete.. sharing the last crumbs of the day’s snacks, taking out emergency blankets, coz we didn’t know how long this wait was going to be. About 30 minutes, George and our 2 vehicles reach us and we head off.
George’s version again: “Comment of the race award must go to Lickety Split. "We know where we are, We are at the Dargle". For the Out of Towners the Dargle is an are of about 4 000 000 km square excluding Durban and stopping just short of Barbeton, I think. Upper Dargelites speak in posh English accents and wear tweeds, whilst lower Dargle is a seething mass of Voodoo and bongo drums. There are 45 000 Dargle signs spread over this area. A very honest mistake.”
In the cars we hear of another team already at the Nottingham Road hotel having warm food & beer and that is where we’re heading now. A rather long drive and we get to this:
…which is a checkpoint that one of the other team s already posted. But happy to be amongst civilisation, we get to Nottingham Road and see lots of cars. It is freezing cold outside and in our rugged gear we run for the door. Hearing loud music we are very positive about our hot meal and logfire. Get to the front door and waiting for the others, we spot someone’s dinner & drinks on the floor next to the front door. Open the door and it looks like a matric holiday party. Young, very young, very loud, very drunk. So we run for the open table at the back.
Status: 1 Log fire next to 2 rather drunk old men, NO hot food, outsiders.
Not much time needed for everyone to agree that we don’t belong here. No jewellery and aftershave left after our 15 hour excursion. So we leave after the second song. So this was our Nottingham Hotel Pub experience… Expectation and disappointment are closely linked.
Now heading to Highmoor Nature Reserve which is the finishing point, but also our camp site for the evening. What a great feeling when we drove past the leading team on their last run/hike leg towards Higmoor, looking strong. (Envy, envy…) It felt like the longest drive of our lives. Thinking every 10 minutes, it must be just around the corner. A very long private cement road rolling for at least 8kms is what the teams still had to finish with and we were knackered just driving it!
We reach campsite… meet George and his family and some other teams that were also fished out. Long awaited ablution and hot showers nowhere to be found.. as we found out the next morning that we were actually camping on the picnic site! Real campsite with facilites were about 300m away on the next hill.
With the tents up and water almost boiling, everyone huddles around a picnic table, waiting for the teams to come in. George confirmed that only 3 of the 7 teams were still in the race. Here we get the maps out and trace our steps back to where we lost the plot… but “die koeël is deur die kerk”.
With excitement and applause the first team finished in 18hours and 20 minutes – the cut off at 24hours.
Official Finishers were: 1. Team Olympus 2. Team Yoshimi 3. Team Xtreme
What we did not get to was the cozy Everglades Hotel, the top of the Ihlazane, the Umgeni Vlei (Source of the Umgeni River), Kamberg Bushmans art centre and the last rolling hills up to Highmoor.
What we did get to that was bigger than the race itself, is spending time with others. Getting to know them, what drives them, what slows them down, allergies, interesting hobbies & talents and the endless thankyou’s for biltong and last sweeties that still gets shared.
This is the blog of the racers who recorded their journey: http://sites.google.com/site/arkzn4/home
Thursday, January 1, 2009
Tuesday, December 19, 2006
UGE 150km, Botshabelo/Loskop Dam, 16-17 December 2006
Team: Lickety-Split (Fast and Quick)
Members: William Cairns, Carine Reyneke, Ian Brown, Con Loubser
Seconds: Mike and FannieAuthor: William Cairns
This was an amazing environment in which to run a wonderful race. The race was advertised as a "step up" from the sprint races to real adventure racing. In my mind a step up would have been a 90km race. This was like taking a step up from a road race to a manathon without doing a half marathon in between!
Our team consisted of two AR novices, who had done 3 or 4 sprint races only, one with more experience at longer races but with no official finishes and one experienced Adventure races with a couple of 100km and 150km events behind him. Basically a good complement of experience and youth. The team goals were pretty clear, firtsly to be official finishers and secondly to finish in under double the winners race time.
A lot of planning went into getting ready. With some members owning practically no required gear, and none owning the required paddling craft it wasa bit of hit and miss between the team members to get everything require. It was only the weekend before the race that we finally had two canoes and some frenzied activity went into making sure we were stable enough in the canoes and that we had the right partners for the race.
The team left randburg at 3pm on Friday, getting to the race start at 6pm just in time to register and get our gear sorted out before mandatory kit inspection and race briefing. After plotting all the points, and making the relevant route choices we were left with only about 3 hours to sleep. But the time spent making the route choices turned out invaluable as the race progressed with all the navigational mistakes made in the second half of the race when we had to plot new points.
As a team we did really well, the team dynamics worked out fine, Ian continually played a lead role pulling the team all the time with Con navigation exceptionally well and William and Carine talking all the time and keeping everyone smiling. Even once the length of the race started impacting the novices and the chaffing really started hurting the team was continually smiling, joking and pushing ever onwards.
Due to some superb navigation in the first Leg, Lickety-Split entered the second leg of the race in 5th position. Basically we just never got lost and Con had an unfailing ability to choose the quickest and shortest routes between two points. Even right through the second leg we remained in 5th place with Team Foodstate only catching up during the hike up into the mountains for the Abseil. The trip down the kloof was fantastic (even if I dont like the heights) and the scenary was spectacular. Ryno se Gat was really tricky getting down, absliding down the wet water falls.
The canoe leg was expected by the team to be the real challenge as only two of the team emmbers seemed to have the required balance and a serious lack of balance by certain other members of the team. Fortunatly the time spent before the race working out the right partners and boats paid off and the canoe leg went by without a single problem and was actually for everyone in the team and opportunity to rest and recover. Which was certainly needed before the ice cold cannal swim. We went from almost suffering heat stroke to almost suffering hypothermia within a three hour period. It took some team members over an hour to warm up sufficiently after the canoe leg to continue.
At "the haystack" the storm really came down. We all felt sorry for everyone stuck out on the dam and we were really glad to be out of the water. Our race nearly turned for the worse when we were told that the race organisers were unhappy with us continueing due to safety concerns. We as a team were insistent that we were to continue so agreed to sleep and continue when it was safe. A lot of miscommunication seemed to happen here with the move of the TA back to the dam wall, us expecting to sleep till morning and the race director overriding the decisions made. Needless to say (after convincing the navigator to continue) we headed off on our bikes for the final two legs of the race.
Some bad plotting by a tired team captain due to a tired and frustrated navigator nearly cost us hours of cycling. Fortunatly Ian had read the instructions properly and found a Check Point about 10kms before the position it was plotted. Just goes to show how everyhitn needs to be double checked by a backup in this sport. The sleep monsters were rather viscious that evening with three of the team members insisting on a two hour sleep at the unassisted transition. Trust it to rain as we lay down to sleep and to stop raining as we got up to continue.
The bad plotting was to continue being a problem with the third last checkpoint miss plotted and the navigator deciding to replot everything and then he himself plotting the next point incorrectly and costsing us a 2 hour detour up and down the last hill of the course, and letting the only other two teams still on the course over take us.
In Adventure Racing its easy to know if you are the last team on the course, everyone waiting for you at the end claps you in. Luckily for us the two teams that overtook us at the end each got a 1:30 hour penalty and left us in 6th place overall. As far as I know we were the first team in that included people stepping up from the sprint races to the longer length events.
Its clear, after the race, how much experience counts in a race like this. The two novices really suffered in the race due to bad equipment choices while the other two members could easly have finished the race in a good six hours less. Team dynamics and team work are also so important as "a bad team is as slow as its slowest emmber, but a good team is slightly faster than its slowest member"!
Our thanks to UGE, Nick and all the other people involved in organisting the race. And special thanks go to the seconds Mike and Fannie who were always ready with a smile and a cheerful word even though they had to continually clear up after us.
Members: William Cairns, Carine Reyneke, Ian Brown, Con Loubser
Seconds: Mike and FannieAuthor: William Cairns
This was an amazing environment in which to run a wonderful race. The race was advertised as a "step up" from the sprint races to real adventure racing. In my mind a step up would have been a 90km race. This was like taking a step up from a road race to a manathon without doing a half marathon in between!
Our team consisted of two AR novices, who had done 3 or 4 sprint races only, one with more experience at longer races but with no official finishes and one experienced Adventure races with a couple of 100km and 150km events behind him. Basically a good complement of experience and youth. The team goals were pretty clear, firtsly to be official finishers and secondly to finish in under double the winners race time.
A lot of planning went into getting ready. With some members owning practically no required gear, and none owning the required paddling craft it wasa bit of hit and miss between the team members to get everything require. It was only the weekend before the race that we finally had two canoes and some frenzied activity went into making sure we were stable enough in the canoes and that we had the right partners for the race.
The team left randburg at 3pm on Friday, getting to the race start at 6pm just in time to register and get our gear sorted out before mandatory kit inspection and race briefing. After plotting all the points, and making the relevant route choices we were left with only about 3 hours to sleep. But the time spent making the route choices turned out invaluable as the race progressed with all the navigational mistakes made in the second half of the race when we had to plot new points.
As a team we did really well, the team dynamics worked out fine, Ian continually played a lead role pulling the team all the time with Con navigation exceptionally well and William and Carine talking all the time and keeping everyone smiling. Even once the length of the race started impacting the novices and the chaffing really started hurting the team was continually smiling, joking and pushing ever onwards.
Due to some superb navigation in the first Leg, Lickety-Split entered the second leg of the race in 5th position. Basically we just never got lost and Con had an unfailing ability to choose the quickest and shortest routes between two points. Even right through the second leg we remained in 5th place with Team Foodstate only catching up during the hike up into the mountains for the Abseil. The trip down the kloof was fantastic (even if I dont like the heights) and the scenary was spectacular. Ryno se Gat was really tricky getting down, absliding down the wet water falls.
The canoe leg was expected by the team to be the real challenge as only two of the team emmbers seemed to have the required balance and a serious lack of balance by certain other members of the team. Fortunatly the time spent before the race working out the right partners and boats paid off and the canoe leg went by without a single problem and was actually for everyone in the team and opportunity to rest and recover. Which was certainly needed before the ice cold cannal swim. We went from almost suffering heat stroke to almost suffering hypothermia within a three hour period. It took some team members over an hour to warm up sufficiently after the canoe leg to continue.
At "the haystack" the storm really came down. We all felt sorry for everyone stuck out on the dam and we were really glad to be out of the water. Our race nearly turned for the worse when we were told that the race organisers were unhappy with us continueing due to safety concerns. We as a team were insistent that we were to continue so agreed to sleep and continue when it was safe. A lot of miscommunication seemed to happen here with the move of the TA back to the dam wall, us expecting to sleep till morning and the race director overriding the decisions made. Needless to say (after convincing the navigator to continue) we headed off on our bikes for the final two legs of the race.
Some bad plotting by a tired team captain due to a tired and frustrated navigator nearly cost us hours of cycling. Fortunatly Ian had read the instructions properly and found a Check Point about 10kms before the position it was plotted. Just goes to show how everyhitn needs to be double checked by a backup in this sport. The sleep monsters were rather viscious that evening with three of the team members insisting on a two hour sleep at the unassisted transition. Trust it to rain as we lay down to sleep and to stop raining as we got up to continue.
The bad plotting was to continue being a problem with the third last checkpoint miss plotted and the navigator deciding to replot everything and then he himself plotting the next point incorrectly and costsing us a 2 hour detour up and down the last hill of the course, and letting the only other two teams still on the course over take us.
In Adventure Racing its easy to know if you are the last team on the course, everyone waiting for you at the end claps you in. Luckily for us the two teams that overtook us at the end each got a 1:30 hour penalty and left us in 6th place overall. As far as I know we were the first team in that included people stepping up from the sprint races to the longer length events.
Its clear, after the race, how much experience counts in a race like this. The two novices really suffered in the race due to bad equipment choices while the other two members could easly have finished the race in a good six hours less. Team dynamics and team work are also so important as "a bad team is as slow as its slowest emmber, but a good team is slightly faster than its slowest member"!
Our thanks to UGE, Nick and all the other people involved in organisting the race. And special thanks go to the seconds Mike and Fannie who were always ready with a smile and a cheerful word even though they had to continually clear up after us.
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