Once upon a time, a long, long time ago, a MATES man had the wonderfully crazy idea to start adventure racing. He found 3 other willing MATES and chose Expedition Africa – the longest, toughest one of the lot as their virgin trip. Yes, children, he was a little bit crazy… This is their story in their own words.
The adventure started with 2 hectic days of packing, unpacking, packing again, and then just for kicks, repacking once more. Saturday morning we left home after loading up the cars with bikes, batteries, multiple sets of shoes, tights, thermal shirts, hats, gloves, paddles, food, camelbacks, tape, knives, people, jitters and more food. After arrival in Onrus, we unpacked the cars in order to pack up kayak bags, bike boxes, gear boxes, and backpacks. It was a tiring and harrowing day and a half. We were exhausted before we started! Thankfully due to some subtle flirting by the females half of the team, we were able to get some good tips from the more experienced racers – things like “uhhh, you might want to make sure you tape up the inside of the bike box also, newbie.” Ok, maybe it wasn’t the flirting, but the panicky deer-in-the-headlight looks that won the advice. Either way, it was helpful!
“We are from Cape Town; our team name is MATES, and we’re predominately trail runners. We are trying out Adventure racing for the first time with this one.” After introducing ourselves, there were guffaws of laughter from the generally more experienced field. Only slightly daunted, we grinned, sat back down with our maps, and somehow, later in the evening, amongst the mayhem, our navigators sorted them out, copied the checkpoints, and highlighted our planned route. We were ready!
The start of the race was scheduled for sunrise, Monday morning, and for some reason, the organizers thought we needed 3 hours to get up and shrug on the 1 set of clothes we had left out of the endless gear boxes packed up the day before. Cher (not me, but the real Cher) thus started belting out tunes from the main marquis at about 4am. What a wake-up call.
The first leg of the race was a “quick” orienteer around Hermanus. We immediately felt justified in our choice of navigators, and their choice of route, because we were just behind team Merrell at the first checkpoint! This was the only time in the race we would see them. Machines. Anyway, after about 2 hours of strolling around town, the checkpoints took us up into the hills. Excellent – our forte – trail running! We again made a navigationally unique decision to run around the hill and then up to the beacon, rather than bundu-bashing over. Good choice #2! We made up about a ½ hour of time and passed a team or two that had a stronger start. We made it to the beach and the first transition point about 3 hours after the start.
Leg 2: Kayak!
Next was a 20km paddle across the lagoon and up the river to Stanford. This would have been lovely, except there were some odd weather patterns making their turns on the water. Initially warm, sunny, and calm, the lagoon quickly turned into a replica of the Pacific Ocean during the Perfect Storm, and our little ride-on-top-of-the-water kayaks became lean mean ships, cutting through waves and monsoon-like swells. They advised us not to drink the water in the lagoon, but sitting in the front of the kayak, I couldn’t help but swallow mouthfuls of the stuff as the spray crashed over me time and time again. The headwinds thus slowed us down a bit, but not for long because spring came, the flowers bloomed, and the sun shone on us once more. Yay… just a little paddle up the river left…if we could find the river! The end of the lagoon left us in a bit of a lurch, and we portaged for a while through green muck, bird-poop-splattered fields, and foul-smelling mud. Good team work was displayed with the girls scouting the route and the boys carrying all the gear and boats. Grin…
The portage quickly lost its appeal however, especially when we could occasionally catch sounds of conversation on the other side of the reeds. Pieter decided to take the plunge – and through the reeds he went. Occasionally calling out words of encouragement to us, like Hansel leaving bits of bread behind, he ensured his safe traverse through the 3 meter high reeds. Victory! He found the real river; not the mucky stuff we were following. So, all to follow, and a few minutes later we burst through the reeds and were able to clamber back onto the kayaks and paddle once more. Relief. Smooth water.
Pulling up in Stanford not a moment too soon (the organizers really did a good job of posting a transition point at just the moment our bodies were really tired of one discipline and ready to tackle something different), we dried off, and went looking for park benches and churches. Both checkpoints were marked with A4-size laminated papers posted up high in trees or on lampposts. Who would think to look up? It took us a long while of wandering in circles before Jane casually looked up while munching her yogurt, ‘Oh! Look, there it is. Letter “F.” Let’s go!”
Leg 3 Trek
It was a long and rather boring trek. Pretending to still be fresh for the cameramen on route was about the only excitement until we hit the beach. Then some sandy paths and good but slightly risky navigational choices took us to the next checkpoint. We saw a lot of teams here, the sun was setting over the bay, and we were feeling pretty good. Blisters had started to appear however, so off came the shoes for the 16kilometer beach route. Seemed like a good idea until the one rock on this long stretch of sand found my big toe! Sigh… might be a long night after all. At least no ghosts, gremlins or sea monsters were after us!
The beach trek took us a bit longer than expected, especially as we didn’t quite pop out where we wanted to. It was dark. It had been a long day. And all those teams that were “with” us before seemed to have disappeared. A lonely bit of to-ing and fro-ing on the beach path was needed before we found the next elusive checkpoint. After thankfully noting the checkpoint letter, it would have been so nice to clip it off on our race passport, but – damn! – the passport was nowhere to be found! Uh oh. This was akin to losing the holy-grail while on quest with Indiana Jones. Well, we’d just have to write down all the checkpoint letters and hope they let us “finish” the race. As we retraced our steps (remember the to-ing and fro-ing we were doing?), we came across a lonely little passport lying in the middle of the road. WOW – what luck! Hallelujah! We were back in the race.
We marched into Gansbaai church hall for transition at almost midnight. Some quick help from the medic on blistered feet, some sticky two minute noodles and not very tasty cans of soya mince, and a 20 minute nap made up our stop before we climbed on the bikes to head back out into the battle! Children, we don’t need to mention that the first fall of the whole race was Cher, on the pavement outside the church, because she forgot you needed to have forward motion to be able to stay upright on two wheels. And we certainly won’t mention that Pieter lost half of his clothes and needed to borrow tights, nor that the MATES team was in second-to-last place at this stage! In this fairy tale, the team was sleek, well poised, and operating beautifully.
Leg 4: 140 kilometers of mountain biking.
Thankfully the first 20 kays were on tar – time saving tar! Putting peddle to the meddle, we quickly worked up a sweat, had to take off layers and layers of clothes, only to regret this about an hour later when the 3 am cold snap, mist, and downhill biking froze us out of our seats. Even after putting those layers and layers of clothes back on, Ryan was shivering and shutting down and desperately needed a nap:
“Guys, I don’t think I can make it. I’m just not having fun anymore.”
We looked incredulously at him. Then at each other. Then at him again. “Did you think this was going to be fun?” Ohhhh…noooo… forget that – this is going to be hell! Cowboy the flip up and get moving! Chuckle. He did.
We grabbed another twenty minute nap behind a bush, but it was really too cold to sleep longer than that and we welcomed moving once more. The next hiccup was a little one really…MATES had somehow lost our map. What?! Yup, Pieter looked guiltily down at his body, wondering how was it that the map was not hanging around his neck any longer? We sent him back a looking, while the girls sandwiched Ryan for another 5 minute doze and watched the sun come up, talking about what would happen if Pieter didn’t come back with the map. Providence smiled on us, however, and he returned triumphant. Onward ho!
The lighthouse was our next checkpoint, and we had some beautiful jeep track and technical sandy paths to get us there. My low gear, high cadence technique was getting a lot of practice! Breakfast at the point (oatmeal and instant milk in a sandwich bag or an energy bar) was well-deserved and delicious, but maybe not soon enough to calm tempers. The first team fight broke out over how much time we could afford to spend on the food break. It culminated in Pieter apologizing for his choice of words, and Jane most decidedly not accepting his apology. Ryan and I were cowering behind the fynbos trying to be invisible. Ahhh…lovely team spirit.
A few kays of hard bike-pushing sandy trekking soon took it all out of us, and we were laughing and helping each other up the hills once more. Good thing too, because the whole route back up north to the next transition was a roller-coaster of note! Up, up, and what?, yes, up one more time…just to fly back down, gain some speed, and tackle the next up. It would have been kind of fun; if we hadn’t already been in the saddle for 10 hours. The road was a reddish sandy colour and the farmlands were really beautiful.
Leg 5: 59…not 47 kms of trekking.
The transition to leg 5 was in a rather smelly barn and pretty rushed because we needed to do some real bundu-bashing up a mountain and wanted to catch daylight. Navigation was superb, and we popped up onto the ridge just where we wanted to – ok, it was a little less like popping up and rather more like chugging through fynbos, following countless baboon paths, and repeatedly getting grabbed and held back by the tight-tearing vegetation (we think Team Energy bribed the plants) until we eventually claimed the top. “Fine bush” my sore ass and scratchy legs.
After summiting and gaining another checkpoint, we decided it was time for our first real nap. We found a flat-ish, not-too-rocky patch to spread out the waterproof and snuggle up. 2 hours later, we heard some other teams passing and decided that 10pm was a great time to wake up and head off on the rest of the trek. Yet another cold dark night was upon us. Napier was all closed up, and singing things like “all I want is a room somewhere…out of the cold night air” and “the sun’ll come out…tomorrow!” kept us moving for a while. This particular stretch was long, straight, and slightly uphill. Maybe we should have tried to run it, but we were basically sleep walking and thought we’d conserve energy for the second half of the race.
Checkpoint 29 was a nasty one, and after another team “discussion” that used up many precious minutes, we finally found it and then desperately needed some more sleep – and warmth. It was again our toughest time of 3am. Luckily there was a lovely dilapidated barn right there! One room was fully intact, with walls, a ceiling, and lots of hay to keep us warm. Did we sleep there? Nope. Aversion to ticks and fleas had us choosing a rather drafty, open air corner of the barn…but still better than under the trees. Another 2 hour nap left us feeling much better and we packed up and walked on to the next checkpoint up the road with the sunrise. The road turned into a grassy field, where we imagined we could decipher a flattened path by previous teams (sometimes it’s good to be towards the back of the pack) and followed it until we proved correct and joined another jeep track for a hike into the hills. And what a hike this turned out to be! It just kept going.
And when it finally finished at a radio tower on the corner of Salmonsdam Reserve, it actually still kept going, as we had to get down that rather steep little canyon and then do another couple kays outside the reserve to make it to the half way camp. It was on this little jaunt that the team had, for the second time, to ask speed walker Jane to please slow down! She was soo chuffed by this request that I’m sure she sped up, just to hear us ask it a third time. Somewhere on the way down we almost lost a member too. A little slip turned into a “clutching at anything” slide down the canyon for a few heart-breaking seconds. Luck was on our side once more, though, and a good recovery found us all safely through.
Wednesday, 2pm, Midway Camp:
Wow! It was a little piece heaven in this hell of a journey with real supporters to clap for us, a real medic to put burny stuff into our blisters, real food – with pudding! – and a real shower to dump luke-warm/cold water on our dirty bodies. The mandatory 5 hours “rest” sped by and with probably only about 1.5 hours of real rest, we biked back up and headed out.
Leg 6: Biking
For Leg 6, we faced a hundred kays of biking. Easy compared to our previous bike, yes? Well…technically yes, and it started off beautifully. If it had been daylight, our eyes would have seen glorious vistas, I’m sure…but as it was night, we saw shooting stars and the funny formation of Mars, Venus and Saturn grouped together low in the morning sky. I think it was on the second half of this leg that things started going a bit pear shaped, though. Oh, no, even before then, we stopped in confusion with another team, wondering where were we? We didn’t seem to be on route, but neither team could figure out where we went wrong. Well, our navigators had great intuition because when we eventually found the road we wanted, we were a bit further down than expected, but not too far out. Not to worry – what’s a couple extra kays in a 500km race?
As the night went on, there were long stretches of road where the team didn’t say anything, and didn’t always stick as close together as we should have. In fact, Jane took a tumble over the top of her handlebars and no one knew about it until she confessed on the next night ride! Cher had noticed she looked a bit dustier than usual, but with sleepy (uncharacteristic?) dullness, didn’t think what it could mean and never asked. Ryan especially was a silent rider…unless one of the other teams was in the vicinity. Then, suddenly, our man of silent strength would became a social butterfly and chat with the wind as we whizzed along.
Somewhere close to our favorite time of night (yes, the dreaded 3 am cold snap), Jane justly stated “This road is not straight.” Ummm..yup, had to agree there – we were turning and twisting and uping and downing like a proper jeep track should! But, the problem was a very, very straight section of road highlighted on the map. Uh-oh. Problem number…uhhh…how many problems have we had so far? Where are we exactly? How many problems yet to go? Why did we sign up for this? Who ever thought this would be a fun idea?
We followed the sound of trucks and soon found ourselves on the N2 with a signboard. Alrighty then, we knew where we were once again…what’s a couple more extra kays to get us back on track?
Unfortunately, our luck remained low, and we missed the next checkpoint. Had to cycle back twice and get help from another team (passing us!) to find it. Frustrating!
After that, we needed all the joke-telling and random childhood story swapping we could get to carry us through to Greyton, where we refilled water and caught another checkpoint at the local church. About 1 kay away from the church, Ryan suddenly lets out a little “whoops” and does a u-turn. “What’s going on we asked?” He replied…”Well, my back was getting cold. Made me realize I didn’t have my backpack on. I’m just going to run back to the church to get it.”
After that, we pushed on into the night. Just before sunrise, in the grey light of pre-dawn, I looked up and saw car headlights shining down on us. And I do mean down on us. “%&$^, #&$%,” I couldn’t hold back the expletives. Another hill? Like that?? Impossible. What are we going to do? Jane optimistically said “Can’t be as bad as it looks!” She turned out to be right, because Pieter’s fancy 29 inch tubeless tyre popped a flat about 1/3 of the way up the hill (due to that very same car swerving pretty close to him). Ah hah! Naptime for the girls while Pieter and Ryan sorted out the bike. When we were ready to move back on, the sun was a little bit closer to breaking the horizon, and I could see that the hill really wasn’t so bad. Yay! I could see the end of this ride finally in sight.
Leg 7: Trekking (and Major Navigating and Kloofing)
Eventually we made it to the transition point on a lovely little farm outside Villiersdorp. The volunteers were amazing – offering tea, coffee, showing us to the toilet, etc, etc. It didn’t feel like a long stop, but somehow almost 2 hours passed by in cleaning off the bikes (Roly – aren’t you proud?? Confession: we didn’t do it after the first biking leg), packing them away, getting warm clothes on, getting warm food in, packing our bags, and taking yet another 20 min nap.
The first part of the trek cut through some farmlands and went up, up, and up into the hills. My feet bottoms were painfully sore…I’ve read it’s a form of truly cruel and unusual punishment to flog the bottoms of your feet…funny that I paid thousands of rands for the pleasure of doing it to myself. And Pieter and Ryan helped out with my backpack. Thanks guys! While we were attacking this hill, another attack of absentmindedness hit us. This time, it was Jane looking down at her body wondering why the map is no longer hanging around her neck. Oh yes, she had taken it off her neck to point out something to us, and then when she started walking, she dropped it as if it was still around her neck. Lucky girl. Got to run back down a couple hundred meters to pick it up, dust it off, and run back up our nasty hill!
At the top of the mountain, there was a bit more bundu-bashing so our navigators could get to a good “look-out” rock for determining the way down. We had to find an amazingly shy kloof and approach it from just the right angle to make sure we found the rappelling section. Again, navigation was da bomb and we made our way down perfectly. We even collected a missing member from another team! Lucky for him, the rest of his group were already in the kloof waiting for him. Ryan also took this opportunity to “praise” our navigators with his usual line, “Congratulations Guys. Once again, you have brought us to the middle of nowhere!”
The kloof was gorgeous – we were there just before sunset – and the rappelling and rock climbing would have been loads of fun under any normal circumstances. Knowing we had a night paddle on a possibly wind-blown and cold damn coming up next and acknowledging sore and blistered knees, backs, feet, and hands was hampering our spirits just a wee bit. It really was gorgeous though, and our camera lady (who lost the camera in the taxi on the way to the start and only got it back at mid-way camp), i.e. me, finally got to take a few cool pics.
Leg 8: Kayaking at night!
Why is it that we were doing all the crazy things at night? After the kloofing, it was just a long straight and flat road to the damn for the paddle. It was starting to feel a bit cold, and some of the guys from the team just finishing the paddle were shaking in their shoes, so we geared up for this leg. Layers and layers and more layers – all waterproof and thermal – were topped by some black plastic bags for water-proofing. We looked a bit silly, but felt warm and toasty for the entire ride. The organizers shortened the route for the teams in the second half of the field, so instead of 24km of paddling, we did only 14km. We didn’t feel cheated. I think we still got our money’s worth!
The weather was really, really good to us on this leg; the water was calm and there was no wind. It was actually a lovely night-time paddle. When we finished, we knew there were only 3 legs left – 2 of which were really short, so we treated ourselves to another sleep – of almost 2.5 hours this time!
Leg 9: 70km bike
We started this bike at about 4am – in the dark, as usual with our biking legs! It was a great route on dirt road that was almost as smooth as tar and really gorgeous fields of vineyards and sheep pastures surrounded us when the sun rose. We saw some really big beautiful birds also, but I can’t remember what they were. You’ll have to ask our resident walking encyclopedia, Jane, or the really knowledgeable about birds guy, Pieter. I’m sure you’ll be impressed!*
This bike had a rather nasty climb at the end of it….followed by another shorter, but even nastier climb at the very end of it. Grin. Gotta love what we do! Ryan lent a helping hand to Jane up the hills – and she experienced the first and only real “bonk” of our AR! Eating a few sweets to clear her mind and fuel her body, she was able to push on no problem. And good thing too, because as we turned into the wine farm for the orienteering leg, we were greeted by a MATE!
Leg 10 & 11: Orienteering and the finishing bike ride
Claire (and mini-MATE Lucas) was there to cheer us on! And no sooner had we unclipped from the bikes, than 2 more cars zoomed in, took the corner too fast, and neatly parked side by side in “the Italian Job” style, and 3 more MATES jumped out! Mike, Zoe, and Adam were also there to greet us! Wow! Did we have a party then! Team Cyanosis, finished in 2nd place, was also there to cheer on us slower teams, and they were so awesome to bring oranges and cokes. Chatting and laughing and feeling such an endorphin rush, the race felt like it was done. We had to drag ourselves away to really finish the job though. A quick round of checkpoints at the farm, followed by a pretty easy ride from the valley to Onrus finished off the last two legs.
It took some discussion and re-arranging, but we also managed to cross the finish line in formation: 2 by 2. Woo-hoo!!!!!!!! It was done! Success! We finished with all 4 members crossing the line together. And despite a week or two of recovery from sicknesses, blisters, and sore knees, the team MATES are all in one piece and living happily ever after.
The End
* footnote: Blue Cranes – as supplied by the walking encyclopedia after publishing
Author: Cherilyn Vossberg | Team MATES | Expedition Africa, 9-14 May 2011
Well done you guys! Very impressive.