Team: Fred Richardson, Blaize Thompson, Jackie Thompson, Kevin Dold
Support Crew: Lisl (Diesel/Poppie) van Aarde

I apologise upfront for the length of this report but this was an event of extreme proportions. These are just SOME (and there were many) of the notable incidences from our race. Culminating in one final XL one ...

A fresh adventure was had with every new section.

Starting with a VERY noisy 24/7 canning factory, which unfortunately obliterated all Darron's good intentions of a long peaceful nights sleep before race start on Friday 6am.

Putting pre-warmed (in my sleeping bag and not my armpit) contact lenses in. Brilliant idea.

First light start at 6am and seeing so many enthusiastic adventure racers at one event.

Running down a road with Bruce Fordyce. Wondering if he knew what he had got himself into.

Getting mixed up with where to go for the first checkpoint. Losing the rest of the 200km Pro field. Doubling back and being amongst the first teams to find PC1, then 2.

That (dam)n swim! It was the start of us being wet for the rest of the race.

Meeting up with Sterling Lite for the first (of many times) and plotting to try our hardest to pip them to the post.

Naving to the island in the middle of the river. Realising after searching it from overgrown scratchy top to bottom that it was not the correct one. Loss of an hour.

Eventually finding the right goal post with PC. Removing sand from Salomon's and putting wet, gritty socks back on.

10am White Water Croc transition. Nervous, scared, tired, hungry, in a hurry, apprehensive and excited all at once.

Trying to say something worthwhile, pertinent and memorable to the cameraman. (I have now forgotten what it was.)

This section in its own right was so massive and so full of happenings it would take me 3 more race reports to cover. So in an attempt to cut a long but fast moving white water story short ...

We took out at 3pm, 5hrs after starting and a collective exhilarating 5 near death experiences, waterfalls, treacherous strainers, rescuing of another teams paddle and one very impressive rope burnt safety marshal heroine who managed to "throw rope" Fred (who is probably twice her weight) and pendulum him to safety.

Tired, wet sandy shoe hobble run to next bike transition. Discovery of the loss of my drinking bladder bite valve (DuH!) and Fred's compass (DuH! DuH!) somewhere on the river. Good thing we had backups.

Enthusiastic bike transition that soon evolved into a hard slog up every steepest gravel road in Swaziland - in the dark. Lower back pains from paddling and now sitting hunched on a bike carrying a pack bursting with compulsory equipment (including climbing stuff).

Jackie starts the first of her stomach problems brought about by some of the harrowing dunkings and subsequent gulping of river water.

8pm. Stop/start, pushing/falling and waiting for Jacks while she went off to do her business in the dark. Already wondering if we will EVER make it to the end of this race. Deciding, Bruce Fordyce and David Vlok definitely won¹t.

Swazis of the corn!! Stopping to catch our breath in the middle of nowhere, hearing a rustle, turning slowly to focus my headlamp on a small group of Swazi locals standing quite still in the long grass smiling at us through the blackness. You are never alone....

Meeting up with another group of locals who ran next to us shouting: Slow down, this way, slow down, this way ... Friendly bunch.

Riding, riding, riding, riding much longer than we anticipated. Heeding the warnings of the young solitary marshal just before the much-anticipated XL downhill. Realising there was no exaggeration in the warnings. Even so, we managed to catch up to other teams. Extreme damp cold.

10pm transition to hike. Eating everything in sight. Shivering. Being very pleased that Lisl is such a versatile, capable, self-sufficient second. Drinking hot coffee and munching biscuits. Putting on new dry socks and sliding them into wet shoes. Being very comfortable in the back of our 4x4 on top of bags under a jacket while we decide if Jacks should continue or try to sleep away her ongoing stomach issues. Deciding to push on.

Stumbling off into dewy darkness blowing steam rings in the light of my headlamp. Leaving some teams sleeping in transition. Feeling very alone but taking comfort in the company of my team-mates. Very many bright, shiny stars in a clear night sky.

Trustingly following Fred as he found path after path for us to follow alongside that never ending river. Wet socks ­ again.

After thinking we were way at the back with no chance of gaining a place, we passed other teams who were bedding down in various places.

Pushing on and meeting up with Sterling Lite, Ojawa and another team. Feeling like we were back in the race.

Forcing ourselves to keep going, ignoring frequent sleep monster attacks. Choosing our own route different to the other teams with us.

Finally bedding down under satellite shelter on river sand at 4am for a 2 hour sleep.

6am waking with first light.

Relief to still find my contact lenses comfortably sitting in the right place in my eyes.

Path finding in daylight. What a pleasure. Realising we still had a very long, hard going, slow way to go. Knowingly thinking Vlok and Fordyce must have thrown in the towel by now. Meeting up with a Father and Son 120km team who had got disorientated at night. All of us negotiating a crawling, scrambling route through riverside boulder fields and dense thorny vegetation.

9am. Eventually reaching river PC at the same time as 3 other teams that we had passed at various stages through the night. Disappointing but still enjoyable chatting with them.

Biting a hole in the bottom of a Ziploc bag and drinking Pro-nutro mixed with water for breakfast.

Jacks still feeling very worse for the wear and losing strength fast. Wondering if it is time for her to bail. Pushing on. Choosing to do mountain option of the established hiking route because we had overdosed on riverside scrambling.

Filling up with fresh water at hutted accommodation and using their flushable toilets. Timing.

Attaching Jackie to Fred¹s pack so that he could help pull her. Jacks feeling like she had no other option but to quit. Forcing her to eat and drink. Very muggy and slow going.

Light headed suffering in the draining midday heat. Eating Ziploc bagged pasta and feeling almost immediate beneficial effects.

1pm. Jacks suddenly starting to talk and come back to us. Makes a miraculous full recovery.

Choosing a different path out of the valley, which enables us to catch up once again to the middle bunch teams. Amazingly, we were back in our race!

Playing catch up and get left behind games with our friends from Teams Olympus, Bearing Man and Ojawa.

Getting to the next bike transition an hour before we were expecting to. Doing a fast (for us) changeover and heading out to make the most of the remaining daylight. Finding what we thought were the more difficult PCs and getting out onto district roads just as the light faded. We were very pleased with ourselves.

Realising that our predicted 6hr bike leg was actually going to be more like 12hrs due to the elevation and difficulty of riding.

Meeting up once again with Teams Bearing Man and Olympus.

Searching for the elusive school PC with Olympus.

Flying down a road and hearing warning shouts to stop from the direction of blinking headlamps of a team ahead of us. Stopping and discovering that the road bridge that was meant to be there, was completely washed away and in its place, a huge drop and cavernous gap. Thanks Olympus.

Freezing to within an ice-block of death. I¹m making a point here.

Pushing our bikes up the longest, steepest road ever made by mankind. Summating and then riding down only to go up some more.

Meeting up with Darron on a road at about 1am and confirming that he would not close the rope section. I was really looking forward to it. I don¹t think he had slept at all and by his own admission was probably hallucinating worse than us. ??? We then all wondered if this meeting was really happening ...

Alternating between freezing cold, then working up a sweat in thermal kit. Stopping to think for a minute and freezing in your own sweat again. Only in AR.

Eventually getting to the last transition at 2.30am and finding we had passed Sterling Lite and were now in 9th place. Yeeha! Eating warm pasta and four of us cramming into a three-man tent on a sideways double inflatable mattress, still in sweat damp thermal kit and falling fast asleep for 3 hours. Once again - Only in AR. Thanks Lisl for being there for us and attending to our every need.

Waking at first light to discover that amazingly my contacts were STILL comfortably in the right place.

Finding that three of the teams we were racing had already left. DuH!

6.30am Start of the kloofing leg. After half an hour of slow, slippery, wet and methodical descending, we discover that we had not punched the first kloof PC. Bugger! Deciding we HAD to go back. Trying to take a faster short cut route through the bush instead of back up river. Happily finding a poachers trail. Unhappily having Fred¹s ankle caught in a snare. Happily extracting my fallen comrades ankle and dismantling the snare. Punching the PC. Starting all over again. Loss of an hour.

Slowly making our way towards the rope work section with growing anticipation. Knowing this was our final demanding bit and then the race was essentially over with the last 10km downhill ride. Also knowing that Blaize has a REAL height phobia and this was going to be an EXTRA LARGE challenge for him. We arrived at the bottom of an awesome waterfall that looked like it was made for the set of Jurassic Park.

8am. The first scramble section. Unfortunately due to a slow going bottleneck, we could only start climbing 2 hrs later. This we tackled with enthusiasm. We all managed to belay and climb our way up onto the next level where we waited another hour for our turn to use the jumar rope. Unfortunately due to the delays about 3 other teams caught up to us. Including Team Jungle - Bruce and David were still in this epic race. Unbelievable and admirable.

After all we had already been through, it was then that the real adventure of our race began ...

Jackie was the first to go, got the hang of the difficult and co-ordination testing technique and soon jumared her way up and out of sight. Fred and I decided that Blaize should go next because if anything were to go wrong, we would be there to help ...

Full credit to Blaize for trying to ignore his phobia and giving it a go. As a team we really appreciate the fact that he put himself through that. Unfortunately it ultimately got the better of him and he froze half way up. After hanging in his harness for almost an hour and losing all his body strength, Fred and I got permission from the marshal that I could use the same rope, borrow a set of jumars from Bearing Man (thanks Elfrieda) who had now caught up to us again, jumar up behind him and hopefully talk him through and up the rest of the way.

Thanks to Team Jungle who passed by on the second jumar rope for your words of encouragement and as a team we apologise for delaying the progress of those of you who were collecting up behind us. Especially when the second rope was declared unsafe due to the sling that had got knotted on it.

Blaize eventually came to terms with the fact that only he could get himself out of the situation. I got him to remove his pack and pass it down to me. Slowly he began inching his way upward. He was exhausted. I was wet from overspray from the waterfall, getting tired and cold myself and very relieved that he was on the move.

Unfortunately after about half an hour, as Blaize was reaching the top of the worst section where he had been hanging in mid air, the rope marshals had devised a plan and came to his rescue ... Timing. At that stage I was confident that he could have made it the remainder of the way, BUT we had already spent way too much time holding other teams up at this point. The marshals changed the rope to enable them to lower him back down to the ledge again. I however by this time had found a small outcrop of rock that I was standing on and crapped myself when the same rope that I was also attached to suddenly went limp.

The marshals above were notified about my predicament and the lowering process was immediately stopped. Luckily I had been fiddling with all my climbing equipment while waiting my turn and had for some reason attached my figure of 8 to my harness. This I then looped onto the rope below myself, and set up to abseil down. I disconnected and removed my jumar devices and slid down to safety.

By this time Gustav from Rock and Rope had set up his own abseil, came down alongside Blaize and was able to assist him down. Shot ekse!

As with the nature of phobias, the moment Blaize felt stable ground beneath his feet he snapped back to his usual self and we collectively made the decision that we had held too many teams up for too long and forfeited the remainder of the ropes section. Hoping that after all we had been through, that Darron would give us a time/position penalty and not DQ us from the whole 3 day race.

We climbed out of the gorge using a steep path through the forest next to the cliff, clipped the PC and made our way to the final bike transition. Disappointed, defeated, relieved to be out of the situation and determined to finish the race.

Lisl had arranged a substitute bike from Team Bearing Man as Jackie's bike brakes had broken during the night¹s cycle. Thanks Gerhard.

We commenced with the last, mostly downhill, muddy 10km cycle back to Malkerns, which was our original starting venue 57 hours earlier.

1km from the end, the borrowed bikes derailleur jammed which caused the bike to be un-peddelable (I know it is not a word). Blaize took over the compromised bike from Jackie, hung onto my pack and we made our way into the finish.

4pm. Timing. We entered just as Bruce Fordyce and David Vlok were giving their final speeches and impressions of the race. Sorry for the interruption. But great TV coverage for us (grin).

Darron Raw, the work you and your team put into this enormous adventure is much appreciated. By next year, Blaize will be over his phobia (as is the nature of a true adventure racer) and we will definitely be back for more.

Thanks singletrack africa for our sponsorship and Tim Keep from PAW for our custom designed race kit.

Lisl .... I am (finally) at a loss for words ... Thanks for so unselfishly giving up your long weekend and sleep to second for us. You da best!

Fred, full credit to you for naving the hiking sections and dragging us through the thorny bits.

Jackie, shot for arranging all our food and beverages and for being one tough chick.

Blaize, you the Bike Man! The way you tackled those down hills at night with map in hand ­ Reshpecccct dude!

Team singletrack africa, there always seems to be so much more to learn, about the sport we are all so passionate about. And each other. I guess that is what will keep us coming back for more. That and the fact that we have all spent way too much money on equipment to ever be able to justify giving up ...

Onward and upward (sorry B), then downward, upward and on again.«