Training Log Archive: Stijn

This hike took us straight across the Knersvlakte - a dry, scrubby plain with very subtle contour detail making navigation in the dark pretty challenging unless you had a good handrail to use. So we stuck to roads, paths, fencelines and riverbeds, with the occasional compass bearing to cut a corner. Made one 20min nav error when we followed one dry riverbed to early looking for the "bend in dry riverbed" CP19 only to find the freaking Grand Canyon of dry riverbeds just 100m further along ;)

We had planned to sleep about 3 hours every night and started on the first night at a sheltered spot in the open for the last few hours before dawn. Was well-timed with the hiking pace starting to flag a bit.

I think we lost about 3 places while we slept during the night but started hiking well again in the morning. Had an amazing view at the first real hilly valley on this hike at dawn and bumped into Park Rangers on the way up to CP20. Seth started having issues with blisters here and I advised that he stop to sort them out but he said he'd take care of them at transition. I should have insisted as this was the turning point for the rest of our race. I put him on tow for the last 10km of this hike which at least helped keep the team together and moving slightly faster.

This transition felt pretty long at the time, but with the 198km bike leg to plot across 8 x 1:50000 topo sheets, I guess it wasn't that bad.

This was the monster 198km MTB leg so we set off with plenty of food from transition, expecting to take a full 24 hours or more (top team time estimate by Stephan was 16h30m). We had a choice between 2 CP22s here, the one involving a 2km bike portage and the other an extra 20km of cycling. We didn't feel like making a long bike leg even longer and thought "how bad could the portage possibly be?". Pretty freaking bad it turns out!

The issues started before the portage though with a long section of really sticky muddy farm tracks that seized our wheels and made the going very slow. This meant we only hit the portage as it got dark and then promptly lost the path on the way up. I can confirm that carrying your bike through dense thorny bush up a steep slope is just about the worst thing you can do with your time. Luckily we found the path again about halfway up which made the progress a bit faster again. Still took about 4 hours for those 2km making the extra 20km cycle by far the better option. Kev was a hero in this section, motivating, helping with bike carrying, path scouting, etc. It was one of those crux moments in a race where the team could easily have slumped, lost hope and lost loads more time but thanks to Kev's hustle, we kept it mostly together. The portage did unfortunately claim his map board though..

Once on top it was a pretty straightforward ride down to Nieuwoudtville, where the mutton pies and some warm sleep were waiting for us!

Got about 4.5 hours sleep in the office of the church hall - we meant to sleep for less but think we either slept through an alarm or there was some confusion as to what time it had to be set for. The rest of the time was spent eating mutton pies, Seth dressing his blisters (which had now gotten really bad from doing the bike portage in bike shoes) and general faffery. I was pretty frustrated with the slowness but it was like farting against thunder ;)