It only took us 77 hours to complete the event, but between the four of us it has taken almost two months to write the report! Grab a coffee and enjoy the read!
Big Adventure Race (AR) events require months of planning and preparation. Expedition Africa, a 500km nonstop, unassisted race through Swaziland, was a major focus for Team Jabberwock this year, and we made sure we had a strong, experienced and well-prepared team: Cobus van Zyl, Brian Gardner, Sue Carter-Brown and Craig Metherell. Our build-up to the event included a 14-hour training camp in mid-February, the Kinetic Double Moon 200km AR in the northern-Drakensberg in March and a further 24-hour training camp in the central-Drakensberg in May. Expedition Africa is part of the Adventure Racing World Series.
We all felt that our preparations had gone to plan and were very excited to tackle Expedition Africa in Swaziland! Both Cobus and Brian have competed in almost all of the 10 Swazi Extreme Adventure Races between 2001 and 2010, and Craig has done a few Kinetic Swazi Adventures in recent years, Susan had one under her belt… so we felt our “local knowledge” of the area was up there with the King himself. As we checked into the Lugogo Sun in Ezulwini, we were looking forward to the challenge, but knew that with top South African and international teams entered, it would be a very tough race! We made the most of the 2 days before the race start, relaxing and catching up with friends and fellow racers from around the world.
… And then it was GO-time!
LEGS 1, 2 and 3
FORMAT: Hike / kloof / hike
TIME TAKEN: 7 hours 43 minutes
DISTANCE: 43km
ASCENT: 1710m
Leg 1, 2 and 3 were essentially one long hike leg, with an awesome kloofing section in the middle.
The race started with a super-steep climb up Sibebe rock to Check Point (CP)1. From there we headed north-west toward Malalotja Nature Reserve and onto Maguga Dam at Transition (T)1. We had a good start but there were a lot of teams around us; all of us keeping a fair pace, close to the leaders.
We had dropped a few positions as we (with Merrell and Cyanosis) took a different route off down the back of Sibebe rock, allowing a number of teams to catch and pass us. We got back up into 3rd place at CP2, but then somehow dropped back to about 8th due to a silly route choice between CP2 and CP3. After hiking and running hard we were back in 3rd at the start of the kloof, with 1st and 2nd place Estonia ACE Adventure Team and Sweco Adventure Team just ahead of us.
The kloofing section was awesome! Several 3m + drops off waterfalls into freezing water, and bum-sliding over rocks. We were going along well, until Craig had an epic cramping session near the bottom which put a halt to proceedings for a few minutes! Cyanosis passed us as Craig recovered, but we soon caught and passed them again on the hike to T1. We kept a good tempo to T1, where Sweco in 2nd place were just leaving. Estonia ACE pushed hard ahead and were already on the water.
LEG 4
FORMAT: Paddle
TIME TAKEN: 3 hours 16 minutes
DISTANCE: 22 km
ASCENT: 0m
We wasted no time getting onto the Magugu Dam and were off just behind Sweco. It took us a good hour to catch them, but we finally did and then put about 300m between us before the waterfall at CP7. We unintentionally sparked a domestic dispute within the Sweco team when we gave them some advice to pull their plugs out, as their boats were full to the brim with water! We didn’t understand the language, but it was obvious that “should we or shouldn’t we pull the plugs” had already been debated between them!
We got to CP7 before dark and managed to navigate between the dead trees and back out to the main dam before it was really dark. We were now in 2nd place, with Estonia ACE only 15 minutes ahead. We had a very good paddle considering paddling is not our strongest discipline, and were very happy to have caught and passed a team. Everything was going to plan so far!
T2 was busy, as Sweco, Estonia, ourselves and Cyanosis were all there. We left on the bikes at 20h00 just before Cyanosis, still holding on slimly to 2nd place.
LEG 5
FORMAT: Mountain Bike
TIME TAKEN: 7 hours 2 minutes
DISTANCE: 69 km
ASCENT: 2324m
The first big leg of the race! Cyanosis passed us almost immediately as we somehow took a minor detour at the start of this leg. We then hike-a-bike behind them out of CP9 up a steep and rugged foot path for about 500m out of the ravine… always a good way to warm up at night! We got a good rhythm going, but were quite slow riding. Sweco then passed us after CP10 and we were now in 4th. We saw Cyanosis turning back and were very sorry to hear later that one of their teammates had to withdraw from the race as he was ill.
The navigation on this leg was easy but the hills were relentless! We came into T3 in 3rd place, with Merrell only minutes behind.
LEG 6
FORMAT: Caving
TIME TAKEN: 1 hours 43 minutes
DISTANCE: 4 km
We changed shoes and set off from T3 straight away to a series of rough granite caves hidden among the forests. We spent 45 minutes underground climbing and squeezing our way around slippery and loose boulders. This was an interesting and fun leg, but it got tiring! There were some pretty sore and bashed knees by the end of it! Note to team: Farting in confined spaces is Not Cool!
Having emerged from the cave, we jogged back to T3 full of energy.
Arriving back at T3, we had a longer transition before the big bike. Cobus and Brian prepped the maps and we all had a good feed. We decided to have a 30 minute sleep as well, as we knew we would be caught by the darkzone later that night anyway, so there was no real rush. It was a good call to sleep! Merrell also decided to have a sleep, and we left T3 minutes apart at 06h00 on Monday morning.
LEG 7
FORMAT: Mountain Bike
TIME TAKEN: 15 hours 51 minutes
DISTANCE: 165 km
ASCENT: 2350m
The massive leg of the race! This was advertised as 155k, but pretty much all teams clocked 165km with no navigation errors. This was a long and slow leg with every uphill being a bum-numbing-granny-gear-grind.
We started the leg in 3rd place, but were shortly caught by Merrell. There was a tricky path junction between CP18 and 19 which Sweco, Merrell and ourselves overshot. A classic case of maps not equalling what you see on
the ground! After conferring, all 3 teams went their own ways. Merrell got a gap again… and we managed to pass Sweco who had investigated another route choice. Estonia was still up the road in 1st place.
We were caught by Peak Performance, who after a slow start, were making up ground.
We kept grinding and eventually caught up with Estonia who had a few bike troubles and were perhaps paying for a very fast start! We rode a fair way with Estonia before pulling a gap on them with about 40kms to go on the ride.
Sue lost her humour somewhat with the barrage of locals asking for her food… Brian’s famous last words after climbing the ‘last’ big hill of the leg were “only 12kms to go, guys!”. It was a looong 12kms.
We kept pushing to have as much daylight as possible, but eventually got into T4 at 21h45, in 3rd place behind Merrell and Peak. We had started the bike leg in 3rd, but behind Sweco and Estonia. At least we had been consistent.
We had been caught by the darkzone, but arrived at a perfect time to get some good sleep before the restart at 6h30 the next morning. We had hamburgers, warm beds and many milkshakes!
There was interesting strategy for the top teams before the darkzone: you could either go fast, but have plenty of time to rest and recover; or keep constant through the first half of the race, and still arrive to have a good night’s sleep. We managed to plan it well and got in a luxurious 7 hours of sleep!
LEGS 8 and 9
FORMAT: River paddle
TIME TAKEN:3 hours 35 minutes
DISTANCE: 23km
ASCENT: 0m
Six teams made it in to T4 during the night, to all start again at 6h30 on the river. We were with Merrell, Estonia, Peak, Sweco and Danish Dynamite. The race was all back together and we’d all had a good sleep, so effectively it was a re-start to a 24/30 hour race to the finish line.
It was bumper car start with 12 boats all jostling for position. We had a great start and soon Merrell and ourselves had broken away. Peak and Sweco took an early morning swim at the very first rapid! The first stretch was quite tough, with sandbank after sandbank, and Merrell just ahead of us all the time.
About 16kms down river we changed the kayaks for two-man inflatable rafts for a section of rapids! Although the first few km’s of the rafting were quite dull, with only the last km before T6 with some rapids worth writing home about! We all felt that this rafting leg was a bit disappointing, with the lack of long rapids, considering some of the massive rapids we have come to know on other Swaziland rivers during the Swazi Extreme years! Needless to say, we really enjoyed the paddle and got into T6 in 2nd place. We were again very surprised to have out-paddled 2 Swedish teams, and were super stoked with our performance!
LEG 10
FORMAT: Hike
TIME TAKEN: 7 hours 4 minutes
DISTANCE: 35 km
ASCENT: 1360m
We set off well and found the first CP without hassle which apparently many teams struggled with. Shortly thereafter we were joined by Peak Performance at CP24 and did the rest of the hike with them, chatting and sharing food all the way! We all enjoyed this leg chatting to Peak, but it was good that we were all still moving swiftly. We all stopped at a spaza shop together, and bought ice lollies from a dear little girl, who could not believe her luck selling 8 ice lollies all at once!
We had no problems with navigation on this leg and ran into T7 together with Peak, as Merrell were just leaving on their bikes. It was right then that the chatter between the teams stopped, and the race was on again! Estonia ACE adventure also arrived just behind us. The race for the podium was hotting up!
LEG 11
FORMAT: Mountain Bike
TIME TAKEN: 6 hours 49 minutes
DISTANCE: 62 km
ASCENT: 1810m
The last bike leg of the race. We left transition in 3rd place, minutes behind Peak in 2nd and only 45 minutes behind Merrell. Estonia passed us within the first 5kms of the bike, and they were flying! We could not hang on. The wheels then fell off a bit here and we were slow. Craig was a machine and never stopped pushing and pulling team mates! This bike leg had more uphill’s that seemed to never end! Having started just behind Peak, we lost more than an hour to them on this bike. For the most part, the navigation was fairly simple.
We arrived at T8 shortly after 01h00 and were pretty tired! We packed away our bikes but were not focused and lacked urgency! We decided to have a short 30 minute nap in front of the fire before heading out into the cold to tackle the last leg of the race!
LEGS 12
FORMAT: Hike
TIME TAKEN: 10 hours 5 minutes
DISTANCE: 36 km
ASCENT: 1150m
The final leg. Cobus was spot on with his navigation at night, whilst many other teams really struggled on this leg.
The quick sleep in T8 was a good idea for Cobus, but the rest of us were having sleepmonsters! The sun came up and shortly after that Brian’s stomach got very unhappy! A few stops to clear the bowels from front and back, but he kept on plodding relying on the trekking polls to stay upright. This slowed us down a lot and Brian had his backpack carried for the first time in 13 years of AR! We made the call to swim the dam at CP34 which was rather refreshing at 8h00 on a chilly winter morning! We managed to find the elusive path off the mountain and with some help from locals, we found the main path to the final CP37 on the Swazi Sun Hotel gate.
The finish line was around the corner…
Photo credit: Alfred Thorpe (Facebook)
It was a tough race and we finished in 4th place overall, behind winners Merrell, 2nd Estonia and 3rd place Peak Performance. We had come with the goal of a podium, but missed out by only 1 hour to Peak. I really think we could have (should have!) caught Peak Performance on the last hike. But that’s how the cookie crumbles in Adventure Racing! We are really happy and proud with our position and the way we raced hard overall right from the start. For all of us, it was great to be back in Swaziland again.
Our official race time of 77 hours 20 minutes, with a massive 8 hours of sleep in there too! A treat for AR!
Team Jabberwock would really like to thank Workwear Depot Pietermaritzburg for kitting us out with comfortable pre- and post- race gear, Salomon South Africa for the latest in trail running shoes, Adventure Works Africa, as well as The Stamp & Sign Shop and Zimala Brand Production for all our gear banding! We really appreciate the support!
Finally, we would like to thank Heidi and Stephan Muller who put their hearts and souls into the planning, organising and executing of a world class event. Thank you Heidi and Stephan, and your entire team of volunteers, marshals and logistics crew (including the team at Swazi Trails!) for an unforgettable week in Swaziland.