September is for… international AR following

As September (and Spring in the Southern Hemisphere) rolls around, it brings with it two must-follow adventure races. First up is XPD Australia. As this race is nearing its end, Bimbache begins. Unlike at XPD, we’ve got a South African team racing in Spain.

XPD Australia is going all out this year and we can expect some good live tracking and reporting coming out of the race. Race coverage begins on Monday, 2 September with the race itself starting on the morning of Wednesday, 4 September. Held in the Flinders Ranges, which is located in the outback of the South Australia province – 700 kilometres North of Adelaide – racers can expect to find thick, gnarled gum trees, growing alongside stony creeks and ruins of farms left by pioneers, who were beaten back by the harsh landscape.

Peter Dobos (Canada), who pulled together content from AR.co.za, SleepMonsters, FB, Twitter, online tracking and other sources during Expedition Africa will again be glued to his computer. His reports on XPD will be on the BreatheMag website. Peter says that they’ve got a brand new purpose-built website for the event coverage “that looks AMAZING”. Feeds from here will also appear on the XPD website. You can also keep and eye on SleepMonsters.com for regular updates too. And, of course there is Facebook

So, that’s 1-13 September.

And then it is the Spanish classic, Raid Bimbache, which is organised by adventure racer Antonia de la Rosa. The event has been dormant since 2010 when it was the host of the AR World Championships. It is back this year. Two South African teams competed in 2010 – Cyanosis and Merrell Adventure Addicts. Cyanosis again return to this race, which runs from 8 to 14 September.

Surrounded mostly by French and Spanish-speaking teams, Cyanosis will find English-speaking company in the form of an Irish team, Irish Army AR. Hook up with Bimbache on Facebook.

Image of the Flinders Ranges from the South Australia website.

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