Diamond Dash novices, no longer novices

Substituted into this AR event seven days before it took place, I joined Lisa (Ms AR SA & definitely not a novice!) and my fellow novice racers Motlatsi and Nadia …. and seven hours and ten minutes after we had started in cool Cullinan conditions, we finished our first AR race in the hottest Highveld heat and finished 15th out of 120 teams!!! First Novices!!!  

One novice (me) taking the place of my great mate, Mark Hiller, who one week before had sprained his ankle so badly that he couldn’t walk!! He’d been put through 22kms of AR running training for the event by Lisa in the Suikerbosrand. So I should have heard the warning but I still signed up. Around the campfire the night before the race I heard more stories from Heidi & Stephan so it looked like anything could happen on 20 February.

Pretty normal 2km run

–  Running with Motlatsi who’s training for a race from PMB to Dbn (I just told him it’s ok these days to say “Comrades”) and he’ll run 21kms in 1hr 50min on the Sunday after this AR race.

–  Lisa has run 100km before so we have some experience!!

Orienteering MTB ride, with 2 spills to the Novices

– one a gentle head over heels in the grass for me.

–  one resulting in a bloody clean cut gash to Nadia’s temple, which happened at the furthest point on the course and needed medical attention back at the changeover point.

Dragged our bikes up that hill where the contour lines converged.

Orienteering Run, a long time out there and just one OP that wasn’t chased, made more difficult by not having the question sheet … but then it’s all about team work.

–        Only casualty was the sole of one of my Nike running shoes. I’ll have to get some new AR Asics from Stefan at Kinetics on Rivonia Road.

–        All crawled through the cave (Motlatsi & me on our backs while Lisa just slides through forward) and we also made it from Bethel to Heidelberg to Wits.

Learnt alot about trees along the way.

 Last MTB route ride, started at about the 6 hour mark, which Gijima planned as the cut off time.

–         One tired rider (c’est moi) who had to get off and push 100m up two of the hills on the way to the abseil

–        Recovery point at the abseil, while Nadia safely did the ropes  

Easy boere sport 3-legged race and quick long awaited swim

–         Motlatsi proves that black guys can swim

–        Great way to cool off after a little sweat

Team: AR Strategy. Author, John Rivers-Moore, john@radicalwaters.com

Diamond Dash 50km, Cullinan. 20 February 2010