Great race thanks a lot to the organisers, marshals and land owners without you this would not have been possible.
To my team mates Ryno ( The machine ), Kobus ( Navigator ), Greg ( Apprentice ) it was great racing with you.
Lessons learnt.
1) Even in a relatively short race you can fight your way back to the front of the field after setbacks.
2) Anyone can lose a map.
3) Race organiser is human as evidenced by no CP7.
4) Finding a nonexistent CP is impossible even with a brilliant navigator.
5) Plotting your way to CP8 is not easy if you do not know exactly where you are.
6) Make sure you have all the instructions there is an easy way and a hard way to the jump pool, we can show you the hard, long, painful, slow route.
7) Team work does not mean slowing down to the pace of your slowest racer. It means helping him / her to go faster so the team as a whole moves faster.
8) Gaiters are essential for bush whacking.
9) Hairy legs and arms are ideal for collecting brambles and weed seeds.
10) Plucking out brambles so that you can move your knee joint is painful, wear tights or shave you legs ( first legitimate reason I have come across ).
11) AR = use your oldest kit as you will trash it.
12) A Friday night race still takes a whole weekend, ( cleaning up )
13) Distance is no indication of time it will take to complete and AR event.
14) Having commitments on Saturday morning Greg = Hockey, Fernando = Wedding is risky ( I hope his wife gets over it before the next race)
15) Racing in the dark is more difficult.
16) You can go faster than you think you can!
To do:
1) Invent bush whacking tights to save my legs getting shredded.
2) Lose weight ! ( more )
Report.
Racing with Ryno and Kobus was a privilege and doing so with my son Greg must rate as a race I will not easily forget. Greg you are a star well done you raced like a champion. Managing to fight our way back into second overall is a lesson for life that if you do not give up you will achieve and have no regrets about I could have done better.
We raced as hard as we could from start to finish. We lost our map while on the rally style bike navigation leg and in the process of finding it lost three positions, I remember at the time thinking how are we going to get back from this, only to find that we managed to get back into second spot before the end of that leg.
The hike went well until CP7 which was not there, we did find CP10 in the process though which came in useful later.
Finding CP 8 was a mission getting to the jump our route is not recommended ( via CP9 ). By the time we got there we were 2 hours back on the leaders and in about 5th spot.
From there the race was just about perfect, navigation was spot on and we steadily made up ground. Ryno provided some assistance to get my speed up ( push ) and Kobus helped Greg ( pull ) and in the process we fought our way back into second and the time deficit to first was reduced to 1 hour.
The highlights were the swim across the dam, the jump, working as a team, the rally navigation, running together between CP’s on the second hike.
AR is a great sport and what nice people it attracts. Well done to the Ants we only spotted your tracks. To Team Kinetic who had double the mandatory equipment required ( 2 x Girls ) well done on your official win.
Till next time.
Best regards
Alec
Author: Alec Alvierinos.
Ystervark en Lekker, Pretoria. 12/13 March 2010
