XTRI 2022 ON THE BACK OF ADVENTURE RACING - August 2021

Challenge 2022 - doing the x-tri in 2022

Only two people in the world completed the xtri series.....will have a go in 2022

2021

Preparation October 2021 Knysna Extreme in a team race - Die challenge - 5 km swem, 174 km fietsry en 50km hardloop - Ruanda, Deon, Renier

Training day - West Coast National Park - Renier 30 km, Deon 62km, Ruanda 2km

16 October 2021 - The event - headwind, rain, heavy tide......

#6 Ben Swart - Ben - keerpunt










#5 Scotland We decided to do an international race in Scotland, and it took place in Stirling.  On our way to Stirling we started in London where a London bus dropped us off close to the Marble Arch.  That was 10kms from our hotel.  No matter hat we did, the taxi's refused to carry our baggage.  At ons stage Janus stood away from the baggage, flagged down a taxi, got in, and then instructed us to load.  The driver went mad, but Janus did not budge, and got out luggage to the hotel.

We saw the Hunchback of Notre Dame in the London Theatre - it was stunningly beautiful and the next morning we rented a car and travelled through to Wales, where we spent a delightful evening amongst some local Welsh people in a pub that I fail to remember the name of.  The little town was called Windermere - next to the Windermere lake.  I do however remember the wine we had.....1.5 liters of Beyers Truter's best - bought locally and transported across the world to be enjoyed the day before we started an international race.  I also remembered there was no blueberry cheesecake.....are your serious?

  We were amazed to meet another South African at the race, Derik Ziade.  Derik was proud to wave his miniature version of the new flag and he participated with an american team from Las Vegas.  We had a lot of fun and he seeked us out frequently to get news about the events back home.  We also met some kids from Panama, all downhill mountainbikers, they frequently participated in international downhill events, in the days before Greg Minnaar became a household name.

The first photo shows our baggage, a whole 70kg per person.  BA sponsored our extra weight.  It consisted of green crates, and bicycle boxes, we even took our paddles.  The bicycle rack can be seen.  We bought this as an emergency to transport the bikes from London to Stirling.

The team just before the start of the race. Elize is holding two bikes, both Trek's.  I still have both those frames.  The trek 6000 frame is often called bulletproof.  The cycling was around 75 kms with a rolling slow start.  Afterwards we tracked through a gorge where we had to go upstream.  We had a big laugh when Ben wanted to take his shoes off to keep it dry.  The gorge got deeper, and at some stages people were abseiling into the gorge.  The gorge eventually flows into Loch Lomond.

One part of the race took us to where Rob Roy escaped - the video was not taken by us, but it is where we participated.  the race route took us from Rob's cave across the lake into the mountains.  The lake was Loch Lomond. The picture below is where the 100 meter abseil took place.  We arrived at 4am and had to wait in a chilling wind to get to abseil down.  The Scottish woman had to rub my hand to enable me to hold on to the rope!

It was raining, it was misty, navigating in mist is tough.....we got lost.....one night we slept in a bus shelter, another time we slept in a wooden shelter - barn - where a young child brought us chips and sandwiched, his name was Jamie Ferris.    Ben Swart can be seen below between Elize and Janus.

Ben's life took a different direction after this event, and his amazing story can be read on the following link....https://www.iol.co.za/news/south-africa/eastern-cape/shark-scare-in-surf-7251951.  His comment on the TV show "Don't sweat the small stuff" tells you a lot about life.

One of the legs had two horses.  We had to share the horses, but as I am not horse trained.....I had to walk the full distance.  I think I was sleep-walking at this point in time.

The  race started with a team march through the town of Stirling, whilst Scottish music was being played.  It was amazing, the whole town was out on the streets, watching the international athletes walking through.  I still have this flag, and the walking aids that I used to carry the flag.  The second photo includes Derek Ziade and Ben Swart.

#4 Cape Town races - we did a couple of races in the Western Cape, and one memorable one was with Don and Franco.  We raced really well and has some fun.  The race started with some activities in the waterfront, which included an abseil, a jump of a ship into the harbour, and some kayaking.  It was done as an advertising exercise.

The race included a hike up Arangieskop.  It was so misty that we could not see the checkpoint.  At precisely the right moment the sky opened up, and there was the checkpoint, straight ahead!

The race started with a swim in the Breederiver, and Don and I decided we will do the swim, dark, black water, eish, the other two team members had to kayak to a waiting point and we had to swim to them.

Feeding is a big part in these races, and our back up team - Mettie and Deon Pretorius fed us well.

#3 Namibia solo - The last race we did with Zirk was the Namibia desert challenge.  I could not find any photos other than two photos that were taken before the race.  We camped in Swakopmund before the race, and the bakkie with the little yellow boat is seen at one of the camp sites.  The second photo was taken the day before the race.  We rented quad bikes for the day, and the guide warned us repeatedly to stay in his tracks.  He even stopped and told Lawrence that we will go back if he does not adhere.  He then took us up and down some of the slopes, and eventually parked on one of the slopes.   I was second last in que, and I had to accelerate a lot to get to the top.  Getting to the top I wanted to park on his right hand side, only to go over the edge of the dune.  Some 15 meter drop.  I landed safely, and suddenly realised Elize was following me.  I barely moved out of the way when she landed next to me.  It could have been a disastrous accident.

During the race, which started at Swakop with a 21 k run to Dolphin point, we eventually had to kayak across to the lighthouse, and then to Walvisbay, and back to Dolphin point again.  Anette, a participant fell over, and within minutes started to suffer from hypothermia.   We decided that Janus had to kayak back with his stable kanoe to save a life, which he did.  We initially lost her kayak, which was later recovered some miles further on a beach.

The waves were somewhere between 5 and 8 meters high, an often one could not see anything else but water.  The water was cold, and the rescue teams in their dingy's did not launch, because it was too dangerous!

We eventually did Guanikontes as a hike, and it took us almost two days.  Anette got lost, and eventually had to be rescued by a helicopter.  It was so cold at night that we had to make a massive fire.  We use a small piece of toilet paper to start a fire with driftwood that accumulated in the root of a tree.  We used karrimor bags to protect us from the dew, until the fire melted the plastic.

#2 Zirk Botha days - Zirk Botha became Mr Adventure race in SA, and many big names went further in the world and won international events.  Mark Perrow, John du Plessis, the Collins brother, Philip Swanepoel and Paul Mitchel.  Paul died when he had to retrieve some beacons after a race, and he slipped and fell backwards - it was raining and muddy.  He died instantly.  Philip died in a helicopter accident.  Paul never failed to finish a race.  The champion however was a small guy named Chad.....he was the best of them all.  The photo's are poor quality, but gives a nice memory. Some other memories are the bibs of the time, here are two examples:

Navigation is the key element and often teams got lost.  Here we are planning with another team on which way to go - I remembered later that Zirk told us that a fire break is not a road, we did not listen and eventually followed the fire break......

The second photo was taken in a race in Eshowe, where Jan us dislocated his shoulder in the first two hours of the race.  We evacuated him to a nearby farm, where an Old Mutual helicopter airlifted him to hospital.   There was no doctor on duty, and Janus eventually ended up with a veterinarian.  This chap put his foot onto Janus' ribs, kicked and pulled, and that afternoon Janus was back kayaking with us.  He was also our navigator, and the second photo is on day two when Janus was away to the doctor.  I had to take over the navigation duties, and it is not as easy as it seems.

#1 Adventure racing early days - in the early days MTN started an adventure racing series that lasted for only 2 years.  teams from all over the country would participate in provincial champs, and then the top 10 teams would go through to the finals.   Teams were only allowed to participate twice,  In the first year the regionals were held in Jhb, and the team was made up of Janus, Lawrence, Lawrie and myself.  We can second in the regionals and eventually ended fourth in the national championships at Sun City.  Our team name was Rainbow Warriors, and we had special T-shirts made for the event.

Our second event took us to KZN, where we ended second in the regionals, and eventually ended ninth in the finals which was held in the Wild Coast.  This time Lawrie was replaced by Bennie Smit.  The three pictures that follow were taken at the Wild Coast.  The obstacle course was built under the Wild Coast bridge, it was extremely tough to get the trolley across the last obstacle as the line started to sag and we had to pull ourselves across at a 45 degree angle.  The zipline that was used for gliding down can be seen.  

The second photo was taken before the first event, which consisted of 4 mini triathlons, where each person had to perform the three discipline in a sequence.  My first triathlon on seasand.

Our name changed to Toyota Warriors as they were our main sponsors for the event.  It was not funny when our slogan was "the best 4 x 4 x far" - the Landrover slogan - we never got another sponsor from them.

The event did include some off road 4x4 challenges, where we normally excelled.  This time however we went to slow and lost a lot of time, that saw us dropped from third to ninth.  We got a lot of tv coverage, and I remembered that Lawrence once wore two different shoes, off road merryl's and some asic running shoe.  He was busy putting on the other asic shie, when the tv presenter asked him why he was wearing different shoes.  Instantly he replied:  "One is for traction, one is for speed."