Team: Kevin Hill, Tamryn Taylor, Sean Dane, Andrew Butters

‘Swazi Extreme 2006 – XL’ I read .. and groaned. For Team Whatever, just finishing one of these damn races before prize giving was proving to be a challenge .. we didn’t need ‘extra’ anything! The pressure was building. Our last race report had promised our fans (hi mom…) a finish, we had recruited two new team mates (…even having to fly a team mate in from Cape Town cause he was the only one crazy enough to race with us), and there had been a challenge for out team name. Swazi Extreme 2006 was indeed shaping up to be ‘extra large’.

For once we arrived at the race venue punctually. There’d be no rushed scramble to pack and plot routes this time… It’s amazing though how pre-race tension builds. A lack of contact paper nearly sent our navigator over the edge, only to be saved by Richard Star and his super sticky tape. Finally, with all our routes plotted, and instructions tucked away, we hit the sack at 9.30pm.

Saturday morning and the final points are handed to competitors. O crap, we’re gonna have to work out bearings! Nervously clutching a compass we head to the start line. 1, 2, 3 Go, Go, Go .. and we’re off in a mad dash to start Swazi Extreme 2006!! …and then we were lost. My worst nightmare had come true .. lost within 100m of the start. I cant begin to explain what a ‘special’ feeling that is. Bags are packed, and I’m ready to go … only I don’t have a clue. After running in circles around the clubhouse for half an hour (including a rather amusing duck behind a bush so our seconds didn’t see us on their way out…), we eventually asked for help. Aaah, the looks you get .. pity from bystanders, amusement from seconds, and a rather nervous race director who must be thinking ‘how the hell am I ever going to find these guys again if I let them out the parking lot?!’

After briefly taking Darron through our theory on taking a bearing, and having it approved, he went back to check his master course. Apparently the bearing from the first point to the second was wrong. With the right info, Team Whatever were back on track. Dashing round fields and finding more check points we started to regain some seriously shaken confidence. By the time we hit the dam for our swim there were 7 teams behind us (aside: for those of you new to a Team Whatever race report we’re the sort of team aiming to ‘finish before prize giving’. Not being in last place is something of a novelty). Another bearing saw us head off around a koppie in search of our next CP. We were now right in the middle of the ‘adventure racing highway’ as many teams descended on the island to try to locate the CP. Tam’s eagle eyes spotted the point from across the river. Getting there, however, proved to be a challenge. Slipping, sliding and very wet we were glad to clip the point and head off for our next CP.

Tramping up the road to CP5, I looked at the road snaking ahead and assumed it would cut back on itself. I suggested to the team we take a short cut straight up and ‘cut a corner’. Apparantley that damn road never cuts back, and Team Whatever had started a dramatic push for the summit – vertically. It actually proved to be a good move. The terrain was not too bad, and by the time we hit the top, we’d closed in on last years winners Ngwena Glass ( hi Ange). What a boost for us .. this was our version of being with the racing elite. Of course they promptly dropped us with a speedy decent, but the fact that we’d actually SEEN a leading team on the race gave us a huge boost.

Coming into T1 Team Whatever broke out into a jog. We were feeling good. We had overcome the early challenges Swazi Extreme 2006 had thrown at us, and were still in touch with the field (also, to be honest, we had a new second who was scaring us a bit with his professional approach – there’d be no tea and koeksusters in transition for Team Whatever in this race!). A quick snack and we were onto the bikes for Leg 2. Multiple leg assaulting climbs then seemed to stand in our way to CP7 and beyond, followed by some wicked downhill! We had tons of fun picking our lines, clutching the brakes, closing our eyes and bouncing downhill to T4, arriving at about 3.40pm.

In my opinion, this is where the race really started to show its teeth. Sure, we’d already been dragged up some pretty steep slopes, and then dropped off the other side not with parachutes, which would have been sensible, but strapped to metal death traps otherwise known as mountain bikes, but now the real challenges started to be revealed. With darkness having fallen, we picked up CP10, and headed off to CP11. A long slog uphill and some fairly ‘hopeful’ wandering saw us join a few other teams in search of the illusive CP11. It’s amazing how a tiny flashing red light can make a group of grown people so happy. But there you are, the joy of finding a CP!

At CP11 we made our best strategic move of the race .. we joined TZN for the hike to CP12. Our route choice took us up and out of the river valley in a westerly direction .. a steep hard slog to begin, followed by a joint pounding descent to PC12. By this stage I was really battling to hang on to the back of our team, but navigation was sooo tricky that there was no way we wanted to be dropped. The guys from TZN were good enough to let us tag along, and without them we would have been in for an extremely long night. On finding CP12 at aprox. 12.30am, Team Whatever decided to call it a night. Imagine the delight then at discovering bunk beds at the check point! 2.5hrs later and we restarted our slog. The rest of the hike has blurred together into endless climbs and descents, amazing scenery and tired feet. We made transition at aprox. 12pm Saturday.

Our ‘race strategist’ (aka second) Steve suggested that we have a quick 20min ‘powernap’- for which we loved him .. then he woke us up after what I swear was 10 seconds (the love was lost), but what a difference 20min can make. We picked up our first CP at the Uthandweni school fairly easily, and then tried a route ‘less travelled’ we had picked up on from a 200km race team past Ekuthuleni School. Hell it was steep .. much bike pushing ensued, but the view from the top was worth it. A brief downhill and then 4km climb to T6 saw us get in as dark was falling. Some hot pasta, and then onto the abseil. A new experience for Sean, the abseil appeared quite daunting. In fact all of us got a bit nervous when the marshals started clipping all four of us together and then proceeded to un-clip and re-clip us a million times. We started to wonder just how much sleep these guys had had! As we abseiled down we could see pro-teams negotiating their insane rope section – maximum respect!

With the CP clipped at the bottom of the falls we scrambled back up towards the transition zone which would be unassisted to allow our super-seconds time to get to T7. On arrival we discovered that Sean and Andrew’s black bag containing their bike shoes and Sean’s light had been taken by the seconds! This is where we realised how tired Sean was – usually nothing phases this guy –however, the stream of expletives that followed for the next hour or so while he gingerly cycled sans cleats was quite amusing! Getting to CP24 was a fairly easy cycle, although we somehow how missed our planned left turn .. a little lost, and very tired, tension was hovering close by. Tam however once again amazed us with her nav skills and dragged us and Team ‘In it for the Money’ (? …we named them ZZ Top cause of the beards…) back on track.

Finding CP 24 and T7 really psyched us up. Steve had a whole strategy planned to keep us going into the paddle. It even involved marshals he’d bribed to tell us the last leg would be ‘easy’… He was most surprised when we breezed into transition ‘happy as Larry’ asking for our paddles and pfd’s so that we could kick butt on the last section.

Off we set at a blistering pace on the hike to T8 (paddle put in). After a little bushwacking along the canal and a spectacular face first fall by Tam (the words “TIMBER!” come to mind!) we arrived. We pumped up our boats and set off on what we knew would be a long paddle. What kept us going was the knowledge that all we had to do was follow the canal and we would have finished the SWAZI XTREME! The paddle was tough with many portages and towards the end it broke our hearts to get close to city lights and then get whipped away again. At one point a team tried to pass us on one of the portages; suddenly we got competitive – it was as if we were possessed – for the next 3 hours we paddled harder than we’d ever paddled in our lives. The instructions said ‘no extended portages’ were allowed and that you basically just kept paddling till you arrived at the canning factory, so we did. After extended aquatic bush whacking we could hear, smell, and eventually see the canning factory… the way was blocked with wire and bunting and we could see the main road! We hauled our boats out and starting carrying them towards the finish as fast as we could. The magnitude of what we were about to achieve was setting in – a finish before prize giving was a crawl away! A few nervous looks back to check that the other team hadn’t caught up to us and then there it was… the finish line and our seconds cheering us in! We arrived home at around 4:15am shattered, but happier that we’d ever been – WE FINISHED SWAZI XTREME!!!

The cherry on top was to discover that we were the 6th team overall and 3rd in the 4 man category – bonus! We were so proud! We finally had our goals in sync i.e. “to have fun and finish the race” and it worked. Add to this : no major navigational errors, a sensible sleep strategy, and awesome seconds and that’s how we managed to do so well in our first ever official finish in a distance over 75km!

Thanks to Darron for a superb event – Swazi Extreme gives us the chance to feel like REAL adventurers! Team Whatever are fans for life.

Big thank you as always to Carla our long serving super second who has always believed in us and cheered us on.

Thank you Steve for seconding a bunch of strangers, your experience and knowledge was invaluable!

Finally to my team... Tam, wow... your navigation was spot-on, and when did u get so damn fit?! Sean and Andrew... U will go down in Team Whatever legend... «