It was time again for Kinetic Gear’s first big race of 2012, the Double Moon 250km Adventure Race in the Vanderkloof Dam area of the Northern Cape. For this race, Team Red Ants members were Alex Pope, Christiaan Greyling, Nicky Booyens and Brian Gardner. The team had been formed months before in preparation for Expedition Africa in May, and we had been looking forward to this one for a long time!
Arrival and pre-race prep:
After 7 hours on the road from Gauteng, Alex, Nicky and Brian finally arrived at just before 8pm at Vanderkloof Holiday Report. Christiaan was driving up from Cape Town and he arrived some 2 hours later! Registration and map prep on the Thursday evening was a painless exercise, and Stephan gave a few tips on the race to the Teams. After plotting our route, we cut and sealed our maps, and we quickly headed back to camp to do our final race prep, packing and team kit check…
Leg 1 – 8km orienteering run (Leg time: 1 hour 08 minutes):
It’s always difficult to find the balance between starting positively and fast, and also not introducing too much fatigue early on, so that you still have something in the tank for later in the race. We started fast, and were running hard in first leg. We managed to get a good gap by the end of the leg going onto the paddle. We knew the paddling was not really our strength. Alex navigated the first leg, and his Nav was spot on for every point. Navigating off the Google Map to 10 checkpoints along the way was good fun. With only an hour gone, we were already forcing down sweets and chocolates at the end of run, to try and look after our bodies and keep fed and hydrated.
Leg 2 – 28km Orange river paddle (Leg time: 3 hours 48 minutes)
We knew that anything on moving water would be great fun in those Fluid Synergy boats! We had heard the siren go off at the dam wall just before we put in at Transition (T) 1, which meant the water release for electricity generation had started We were upbeat that we may get a good run in nice flowing water! Our hopes were soon dashed! The water release is actually a lot slower than one thinks, so we out paddled it within the first kilometre, which meant lots of flat water paddling, some boat pushing over shallow water, and only a few small rapids here and there! Despite this, the 4 hours went by quite quickly. The highlights were some small rapids (especially under the Hevenga Bridge) and a large number of yellow fish in one section. We should have taken the river-right line when Stephan was shouting at us to take the centre line under the Bridge, but we managed to miss the massive rock in the middle… just. We did well to hold onto our lead considering the teams paddling pedigree (or lack thereof!).
We had a quick transition at a beautiful shaded riverside camp, and were on our way before the second placed team showed up.
Leg 3 – 30km hike/run (Leg time: 5 hours 30 minutes)
Leaving T2 at 12:30pm meant we were leaving in the heat of day… and man was it HOT! After the quick swim across the Orange River, we set off at a good jog towards Check Point (CP) 13 at the Beacon on top of a hill.
We managed the running and hiking very well, and were consistently moving fast. We dunked ourselves in the canals and reservoirs wherever we got an opportunity to keep our core temperature down while the mercury went up and over the 40 degree mark!
Despite hiking along a canal for some time, we ran out of water after about 2.5 hours on the march across the plains between CP14 and 15, and had to stop at a windmill for a refill. There was a slight breeze when we arrived at the windmill, but soon that stopped and so did the trickle of water coming from the pipe! Brian then climbed to the top of the windmill to spin it, to get some water out of the pipe! This worked really well, and we were back on our way with full bottles again! The hike from CP 15 to 16 (cell phone tower) was a tough one, and Alex hit a sugar low climbing up to the cell phone tower, which was the last CP on that hike. Alex’s blood sugar dipped sharply at that point – but a quick blood sugar test followed by a gel and some chocolate sorted that out quickly! We ran along the dirt road into Luckhoff feeling a little tender, but we pulled off a good hike, and got into transition at exactly 6pm.
Leg 4 – 150km mountain bike (Leg time: 7 hours 40 minutes)
After a fairly good 30 minute transition, where eating and drinking lots was the order of the day, we headed off on the longest leg of the race. We had about an hour of light left in the day- and we made it count. We hammered down on the peddles from the start, and managed almost 25kms before the bike lights came on. We had a beautiful sighting of a heard of Gemsbok in the fading evening light, and realised again that this type of thing is what we remember, and why we come back for the next race! It was a magic Northern Cape Sunset…
We all took a while to recover from the hike, and Nicky and Alex had a few calf twinges, which resulted in Nicky almost falling off here bike in cramp! A few cramp stop tablets sorted that out, and Nicky was on her way again! It wasn’t long that we got our team time trial in order, with the guys rotating on the front and Nicky staying firmly in the slip. Every time we wound up the pace, Nicky would stay right there, never once needing a tow or a push! Machine Nicky! All of us have never during an Adventure Race experienced such a slick bike leg, and our average speed was up in the middle 20’s for most of the leg. The speed was obviously helped a lot by the flatness of the area, as in 150kms, we only had 400m of ascent… Despite packing in lots of water at T3 in Luckhoff, we ran out of water at about midnight, and tried to get some at the town of Wanda. No-Wanda; it was deserted… Doesn’t seem like anything happens there on a Friday night… We pushed on with limited water supplies, and the next 10km of windmills were also dry or broken…. Eventually we rolled up at CP19 on a bridge, and filled up from the river. We put our compulsory water purification tablets to good use here! One of the highlights of the night ride was seeing 2 huge porcupines running along the road next to us, on the way to CP20 – that was really awesome! In the end, the team work all round and the way we all looked after each other and our bodies on this leg was unbelievable, and this helped us to smash out a 23km/h average moving average over the 150km! We got into T4 back at a farm house on the Orange River at 02:12am on Saturday morning.
Leg 5 -16km hike (Leg time: 5 hours 07 minutes)
After a slowish transition and a quick look at the computer GPS track of the chasing teams, we were off to cross the Orange River once again. The river crossing was played up a lot by the transition marshals, but it turned out to be a gentle wade (which we were all very glad about, except for Alex’s sunburn on his legs…) We made a small mistake early on, getting onto the wrong road towards the canal. We quickly corrected that and were on our way to CP22. CP22’s description was “tunnel under canal”, and on the map, an “aqueduct” was shown. So, on approach to CP22 (in a half zombie state at 3:30 in the morning), we assumed we would find a big tunnel under the canal. Nope, not at night. Instead we found an impenetrable wall of thorns. Eventually, after some wandering around on the western side of the massive canal, we clicked that it was on the other side of the canal, so we did the long walk around, and low and behold, there it was. Not very obvious in the dark we must add!! From them on, the rest of the hike was a bit slow, as sore feet and low motivation to push hard took control. We all certainly need to work on the sore feet problem before Expedition Africa…
We saw a beautiful sunrise as we wandered down to the Vanderkloof dam and the final transition of the race.
In our search for CP 22 in the dark. The wide dry river wasn’t all that obvious at night…
Red line = our GPS track. Green line = Stephan’s ‘preferred’ route.
Leg 6 – 14km paddle on Vanderkloof Dam and Abseil (Leg time: 2 hours 46 minutes)
We were all happy to be off our feet again, and the paddle towards the Abseil at CP24 went surprisingly well! Dam paddling in those Fluid synergy bath tubs is usually very slow, but we felt good and were moving ok. Christiaan must have thought that Alex was doing intervals, as every time Alex nodded off to sleep in the back of the boat, he would do 10 hard strokes… Which actually meant that he was mostly doing only hard strokes to stay awake! This kept Nicky and Brian rather busy in the other boat trying to keep up! We had some waves and wind to wake us up from time to time, and the rock formations along the dam edge were beautiful to see! Vanderkloof is really a fantastic dam. On arrival at CP24, it was a steep walk up to the top of a cliff for the 40 meter abseil. The abseil was great fun – really high up above the dam, with a good view and very professionally rigged. We all enjoyed it, except Nicky who had her usual abseil squeal half way down…
A short scramble back to the boats and we were off for our last hour of paddling to the finish! We paddled to the finish to cross the line in 27 hours 58 minutes, at 10:58am, on Saturday morning.
It was a fantastic effort by everyone in the team; we moved fast and were consistent all the way! We put a solid race together, and got a gap on leg 1 that we extended until the last hike. We were slow on the last hike with sore feet and some minor navigation mistakes in the dark, but all in all we managed our bodies well, and we were all surprisingly well matched strength wise, which helped to keep the pace consistent and fast.
A massive thanks must also go out to Heidi and Stephan Muller of Kinetic Gear for another fantastic race! The transitions along the Orange River were really cool little spots. Thanks! And thank you to all the marshals, helpers, medics and sponsors that made the event one to remember! Hopefully you noticed our smiles of appreciation while we were doing our thing.
To the rest of the AR community, get out there and do Expedition Africa. It’s going to be another race to remember!
Until then, safe training!
Team Red Ants
Author: Brian Gardner | Team Red Ants | Double Moon, 10-11 March 2012, Northern Cape