Life and… more alive than ever. This year’s edition of the Expedition Africa was held in the spectacular Wild Coast where the scene was set for my wildest, most amazing adventure yet.
In the months leading up to my first expedition adventure race I often attempted to fathom the enormity of the challenge on body and mind – my wildest expectations turned out to be way short of reality…
The mission was immense, 575km over seven days (or shorter…) on foot, mountain bike and kayak, in wild ocean surf, through rivers and deep dark gorges, over mountains, dusty roads and dense bushes – This was going to be expedition adventure racing at its best, arguably one of the ultimate physical and mental sporting challenges out there.
The field was filled with top international racers. Four of the world’s top ten teams raced, making this one of the most competitive adventure races ever. New Zealand’s Seagate (ranked 2nd in the World), Sweden’s Haglofs Silva (ranked 4th), USA’s Tecnu (ranked 6th) and Merrill Adventure Addicts from South Africa (ranked 8th) all toed the line. I was inspired to be in the same race as some of my AR hero’s. From all the footage I watched and articles I studied before the race, I never really appreciated or understood the freakish abilities of these top teams – but after Expedition Africa these guys are absolute Rock Stars in my eyes. Seagate sprinted through this course in a mind blowing time of 3 days and 10 hours, with Haglofs Silva only two and a half hours behind them, which is almost like a photo finish in AR terms.
With this race being part of the World Series the organisers designed a course that challenged the best teams in the world. This makes it difficult for “amateur” teams to complete the full course in 7 days. This year only 14 out of the 40 teams managed to negotiate the full course. In 2013 only 8 teams completed the full course. So, I reckon, if your ambition is to do the full course, you will have to be prepared to compete in the top quarter of the field, where even the slowest team will be filled with hard core adventure athletes in their own right.
It is difficult to write a race report that does justice to the raw nature of this event, so this is not a step by step account of what happened out there, it is rather the experiences and impressions that stood out for me.
The Team – We had a great team (#20 Team Life).
- Danie van Aswegen was our team captain and navigator. He is real tough guy. Probably the toughest I know. He had a knee operation earlier this year and has not recovered so it was badly swollen right from the start – but he made friends with pain and suffering and carried on without showing weakness. He also has an amazing sense of humour and had us in stitches at times when things were not supposed to be funny.
- Thea-Mari van der Sandt is an international mountain adventurer turned mountain biker extrordinaire. Probably the strongest member at all things technical and vertical on foot or bike. Minimalistic, efficient and happy spirit. Extremely high pain threshold – her blisters on her feet were the worst but she never limped and complained like we did.
- Louis Bredell was our 2ic Navigator. Super prepared, all-rounder. Regularly packing extra weight for the team. Inability to anger. Neatest backpack in the team. A real soldier with never-say-die attitude. The glue every team needs.
- Inus van Rooyen – I love being in wild places with wild people. My ability to consume huge amounts of food while racing is probably a strength. I like and understand water and the ocean and can generate big watts on flat land… not much of that in this race… Messiest pack in the team.
The ocean paddle which started in Port Edward was a highlight. The vibe was electric and adrenaline was pumping. Our timing was perfect as we punched through some serious waves with only a few teams ahead of us. When we looked back we saw the carnage with people, paddles and kayaks being unceremoniously spat back to the beach.
We were relieved to be in deep waters away from the breaking waves, but realised that it wasn’t long before having to contend with even bigger and more messy waves coming out to beach. Paddling in from behind the backline was daunting with beefy 3m breakers ready to wipe us out with any mistake or half-hearted effort. Thea-Mari and I started surfing a huge wave but realised that we had to let it roll underneath us, to prevent us being devastated in the powerful backline. With some reverse strokes and hanging feet over board the plan worked. We got on the back of the wave as soon as it broke in front of us. We then paddled as hard as we could to get through the boiling white water of the impact zone. Every metre gained meant that the next wave will hit us with less force. When the mid break struck we went sideways by the impact but held stable and started controlling the surf until an unmanned kayak from another team crashed into us causing us to capsize. We were already in the shallow water and could wade happily to the beach. Danie and Louis also made it through the dangerous water and we were on a high.
The terrain was extreme with no “easy” sections I can remember. Forget trying to compare any section of this race to your local mountain bike, trail run or adventure race this is next level stuff.
Just to illustrate the point:
- We had a flying start but after the first 20km I checked my watch and was shocked to see that it took us more than 6 hours– I realised that this is a going to be a race unlike any other.
- The abseil was a horror, most teams did it in daylight, but we made a navigational error and had to do it in the dark. It was 100m long and took me more than 40minutes. On my way down I encountered loose rocks, slipped and bashed my elbow, got stuck in thorny vines and had to do some tree climbing. At the end I ran out of rope but luckily Danie, a skilful and fearless climber, guided me safely down.
- Later on we encountered one of the toughest sections in adventure racing. 7km canyoning at night through Fraiser Gorge. We had to fight our way through enormous slippery boulders, icy cold rock pools and thick thorny bushes. It took us an agonising 13 non-stop hours in a sleep deprived and exhausted state.
- On the first 150km mountain bike section we climbed more than 4500m – compare that to any mountain bike race…you can’t.
The navigation was super difficult to say the least – Inland routes had a thousand similar sized hills and a myriad of cattle trails leading nowhere. At night dark moon made it very difficult to match contours on the map with the shapes of the landscape. Navigational decisions were difficult and mistakes inevitable. The mental pressure of taking charge of navigation was certainly an unenviable task. Danie had the most experience in the team and he took charge of guiding us through the course.
Your body will follow your mind. A part of this race is to be mentally prepared for the extreme. In the weeks leading up to the race I got really scared and my mind got more and more occupied with solving the puzzle, breaking the code and finding the clues of this mystery. Going through this cognitive process over and over again prepared my mind somehow for the little rest, sometimes limited food and pain that lied ahead. My body followed by going into fighting mode where I didn’t feel the normal urge for much rest or food and had to consciously decide to eat and rest. My feet were very sore for most of the way, even on the mountain bike, but through it all a strange happiness and contentment came over me that soothed the hunger, fatigue and pain.
The hunger. I realised that I was lucky to always have a strong appetite and think that this kept me gaining strength on the latter part of the race. A lot of times exhaustion has the nasty habit of taking away your appetite resulting in a dreadful downward spiral. I believe that my strong point is to consume huge amounts of food while racing – and so I ate whenever we did not have a shortage of food. At every transition I ate like a dog en made sure that I took as much food as my bag could carry. I tried to keep to a variety of good natural stuff and because you are not going at 160 heart rate, you can actually eat and digest proper food while on the go.
On day 3 (80km Trek) we started to run out of food with more than 18 hours to go before reaching our re-supply box. We luckily crossed paths with a friendly young man. He could speak only a few English words, and the sentence “Spaza shop 5 minutes!” was enough for me to grab some cash and follow him. He became my agent on this mission. He took the lead but was wandering very slowly and without a care in the world, I could feel just a little urgency building inside of me and after a minute I confirmed the direction and politely indicated that I will now take the lead.
We started running and after +-15 minutes we came to a kraal with 3 huts, the one hut was supposed to be the spaza shop… but it was locked up and the owner has gone on a walkabout. This was a problem I thought…my team is not going to be happy…I wasted precious time with nothing to show. So I checked my cash and pulled out a R20 bill and asked my agent to arrange some food. He started a discussion with 3 ladies that appeared out of nowhere. I could see that this was not going to happen quickly so I popped into one of the other huts. There was an old lady sitting at a pot. I called my agent and he started negotiating again. She opened the pot and it was full of sweet potatoes, +- 2kgs of good low GI Carbs.. I wanted it all!
The persuasion from my agent was getting long-winded and I thought that I could help him close the deal by showing the money. I checked my cash, this time pulling out 40 bucks (2x R20) she seemed very confused but started to slowly pack each sweet potato into a plastic bag. Then she took only one R20 bill… I insisted that she take the other one and she reluctantly smiled and accepted. Judging by her hut which had absolutely no materialistic belongings R40 was probably a lot of money. I gave R10 to my agent, thanked him for his effort and literally sprinted back. Halfway back my agent came running from behind like a man possessed… shouting from a distance “We can break! We can break!” (Break into the spaza shop) I just smiled at him shook my head, thanked him again.
The local people we encountered where extremely poor but it struck me that they were incredibly happy, calm and content – their faces were always smiling (maybe our foolishness gave them something to smile about). I think that part of the joy of AR is the fact that you get stripped from the luxuries, complexities and excess of our puffed up modern lives – enabling us to also experience core feelings of overwhelming happiness, calmness and contentment during crazy tough times.
Sleep is a weapon. We made some navigating mistakes and tried to catch up by skimping on sleep. The problem is, body and mind slows down. We had less than 5 hours sleep in the first 6 days and the “sleep monsters” were an interesting coping mechanism for the mind to switch off from reality. On the first night the adrenaline was working overtime and I did not even feel the need for any sleep – good thing because we didn’t. On the second night we hiked on a never ending straight flat gravel road which we referred to as the “Treadmill”. The treadmill was a safe place to practiced sleep walking. Every now and then Danie or Louis would unintentionally start losing direction, swerving off road towards the bush…fast asleep! On a number of occasions I caught myself trying to figure out who the fifth team mate was and where the hell we left him… apparently worries about the “fifth team mate” is a common delusion – when you are counting 4 people including yourself but you do not recognise yourself as being yourself, hence wondering why you are not there … if that makes any sense…
Our first real sleep came after 68hours at the end of the 3rd night at Transition 3, but not before the dreaded 7km canyon section that took us 13hours!. By the time we got to the canyon we were hungry and running low on food supplies so we finished two packets of 85g tuna between the four of us… not much… now we only had a few squashed sweet potatoes that turned blackish still in reserve. When it got dark the terrain got even more technical and at some point we were moving at less than 200m per hour. Our energy stores became depleted, concentration deteriorated and the Sleep Monsters came ALIVE. I started seeing Leathermans and karabiners as my headlamp shined through the water – a scary pirate ship came sailing by – tents floating on the water – heard loud party music. Each of these hallucinations probably lasted between 2 and 5 seconds before snapping out of it again.
It was a seriously slippery, cold and wet effort but we had to push on to get much needed sustenance, attention to sore feet and rest.. When we eventually got to Transition 3 I stuffed my face with a lot of biltong, 2minute noodles, a packet of Tuna, half a banana bread with thick peanut butter and honey, cuppa-soup and strong coffee – then crawled into a tent with a great mattress and disappeared instantly for a 3 and a half hour sleep.
On Night 4 (150km Bike) we got a bit lost on the bike and we decided to sleep at the bottom of a valley next to a river for an hour until daybreak to find our way again.
Night 5 (40km Trek) was long, but we soldiered on and only had a +-15 minute power nap before sunrise.
Luckily at night the stars where so brilliant. The darkness of the moon, clean clear skies and the remoteness amplified the night sky with the Milky Way extending from horizon to horizon providing inspiration through the hard night sections.
Another reward for a long night out was the first light when energy levels spiked and sleepiness disappeared. On the morning of the second day (on the 80km hike) we arrived at a backpackers lodge. Some teams made use of the soft couches to catch up on sleep but we were feeling strong and ready to capitalise while others were lazing about. Danie and Louis used the outside deck to just quickly do some serious map plotting. Thea-Mari and I checked the bar… She found her favourite, Jägermeister… we helped ourselves to a generous shot each… There is nothing like reporting for duty smelling of liquor pretending to have your raceface on!
On the morning of day 5 we have done +-130km of a 150km mountain bike section. As the sun was starting to rise over one of the thousand nasty hills we were climbing, a random sequence of hilarious events unfolded in a matter of 5 minutes. Everyone became chirpy and started telling jokes – then we saw goats climbing trees -Louis and Thea-Mari spontaneously start sprinting at maximum effort for the hill-top as if there was a polkadot jersey at stake! Danie and I fell of our bikes laughing!
The last two days. Louis was so strong in the first part of the race but started to develop the dreaded Mbotyi Belly (Stomach bug) on the night of Day 5 (40km trekking section). We were heading to the final transition well on our way to reach it before the 12h00 cut-off (before taking on the final 170km bike). We were soldiering on, keen to get off our feet and on to our bikes but we probably underestimated the severity of Louis’ dehydration and the other effects of the stomach bug. Louis was brave, never complained and pushed on strongly. Things started to turn pear-shaped when we started hugging the jagged coast line (as opposed to opting for an inland route) with about 10km to go. Some serious rock work and dodgy wave timing was required to get around spectacular but dangerous coastal cliffs. At one point we got stuck on a cliff having to wait more than an hour for the tide to drop before we could negotiate a passage in between huge crashing waves to our only escape route. Nervous times but we figured out the timing of the waves and scrambled over sharp rocks to safety. Now the pressure to reach the cut-off was on. We had to lift our pace. The temperature started rising and with about 7 km to go Louis suddenly started to show effects. We decided to rest just for a minute, but Louis was weak, pale and dehydrated. He was not sweating, a sign that his engine overheated… he was shutting down… but murmured that he still wanted to continue… it was obvious that he needed help. We instantly knew that the time has come to take out our sealed emergency phone. Danie climbed a hill to get signal and call for help. Thea-Mari and I dragged Louis off the rocks away from the incoming tide and onto a small beach with trees to shelter us from the sun and wind. We took out sleeping bags and made him comfortable; he could only take a few sips of electrolyte drink before falling asleep. He was severely dehydrated and had a fever. Danie came back with the bad news that there were no access roads and that it would be impossible to evacuate Louis.
At that stage there were numerous teams also struggling with the nasty Mboyti Belly and the medics were working over-time to attend to everyone. So the plan was to let him sleep and keep him hydrated, until showing signs of recovery – then walk him out to Mboyti, the last transition. At that stage we did not even care that we missed the cut-off, we now focussed on getting Louis back to health. We regularly waked him to force down just a few sips also checking his fever and adjusting his sleeping bag to keep his core temperature as stable as possible. There wasn’t much improvement to his condition in the first 7 hours and he didn’t even open his eyes or said anything when I woke him for regular sips. But then he started taking bigger sips and seemed to have recovered a bit.
At this point Danie arranged with the race organiser to pick us up, which meant that Louis had to walk about 5km over very difficult terrain…. Louis was keen to go but his body wasn’t and after the first 5 steps we realised that he was going nowhere. We made a fire and constructed a shelter of some sort with branches, leaves and a space blanket to protect us from a cold wind that was blowing through the night. We lied like sardines next to the fire trying to keep warm and continued to make sure that Louis was re-hydrating. After resting for 20 hours Louis woke up with a smile on his face… the man was back, he managed to return from a very dark place. We were all very relieved.
Now we had only a 7km hike left to Mboyti. We witnessed the most fantastic sunrise and stunning views of rolling hills and huge waves. I just felt so blessed to be there with my team mates and realised that after all we have been through the result of this race has no effect on our adventure that we experienced. This was only my first race but this mysteriously wonderful expedition race had a huge effect on me and will keep on louring me back for more.
Even though (like most teams) we did not completed the full course we were gracefully afforded the joy of crossing the finish line with a bottle of champagne and receiving our trophies at the awards ceremony where we celebrated like champions.
By the way – In the end we were ranked 35th out of 40 teams – inspired for more.
Author: Inus van Rooyen, Team Life | Expedition Africa 2014 – Wild Coast, South Africa – May 2014.