We were off to a little bit of a slow start with my dear wife, Lizelle, trying to catch her breath on the first run leg. I personally think it was more nerves about racing with Alex for the first time than anything else. We came into the first transition feeling that we might have some catch-up to do.
On the first bike leg Lizelle caught up with her breath and raced strong. Alex was not only navigating us superbly to all the CPs and OPs, but was towing Lizelle at stages at a pace that was hard for me to keep up to. The first bike leg went fairly uneventful, except for me running through a massive spider’s web on my way to the stone house. I was very relieved to see it still sitting in the web on my return. (Btw. That’s why our passport looked like that guys.)
We were onto the second hike after another quick transition. Again, Alex kept us on the right track at a strong pace. We were hiking with a couple of other teams at a certain point, but seemed like they decided to take a turn-off where we kept going straight, only to find the CP around the next tree. We had a nice adrenaline infusion when we stumbled over some ostrich eggs in the veldt, we picked up our pace but fortunately the mother was busy crossing another road. We decided that if the foofie slide was open upon returning to base, then we’ll quickly do the special task. It was, and Alex grabbed the handlebar-sliding-mechanism-thingy and me and Lizelle grabbed the smallest tubes we could find (this from prior experience of flat-non-moving-water tubing).
Another quick transition and we were out on the last bike leg. It was really fun seeing Hawkstone hot on our heels when reaching the bottom of the hiking trail* at the second last CP (*why do most AR organisers believe you have to hike your bike at some point?). This made us really step up our pace and we pushed hard. We were a little relieved to see them following us through the thick and across the river, instead of having a last glance at the map and taking the highway to the left and around the thick stuff. We managed to keep our lead and finished the race in 3h29min.
Later we were informed that we missed CP5. Eish, what a disappointment when they promised me they were not joking, waving the passport in my face (I just added that for dramatical entertainment). It was especially a bummer as I can clearly remember the CP and we even got a photo from Erik right there. I must have done something wrong when punching it. The great news was that Alec from Hawkstone did the same thing! Both first teams were penalised and had fortunately a large enough gap between the following teams to keep our lead! Phew, talk about an adventure!
The race was really well organised and we had a really good time. The venue was lovely and we saw some beautiful wild life all over. My team mates, as always, were fantastic and it was a pleasure to race with Alex for the first time. He was an excellent navigator, a great team player and as strong as an ox (the lean fast type of ox)! My beautiful wife hung on for dear life and showed great form throughout.
I always feel very blessed to be able to do this wonderful sport! Thanks for making it happen Senseless. Well done to all the other teams, especially all the newbies!
Author: Wiehan van der Merwe | Team Unchartered | Senseless Summer AR, 5 Feb 2011