I've had this on my pc for a while, time to send it out to cyberspace!
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Road bike?
Check!
Mountain bike?
Check!
K1 canoe?
Check!
Surfski?
Check!
Running Shoes?
Check!
Speedo and goggles?
Check!
Two support vehicles, with necessary crew?
Check!
1 imbecile, intent on dragging all this paraphernalia round the course for almost 10 hours?
CHECK!
Well it started as a bit of a bar bet and turned into a more of a mission. The Totalsports Challenge is red letter day on the fit mad idiot’s calendar. The first Saturday of every year sees a procession from Gordon’s bay to Kleinmond by way of a:
12km surfski in Gordon’s Bay
1.5km swim in Gordon’s Bay
50km road ride to Kleinmond
13km road run to Arabella
12km lagoon paddle on Botrivier vlei
25km mountain bike up the Highlands Road, looping back to Kleinmond
9km beach run ‘out and back’
It can be done in 7 person teams, triples, pairs and insane singles. Trips and pairs divide the legs up, and do the beach together. Always keen for a challenge (and short on friends) went in for the long haul on my own. The individual course record was just over 7 hours, I was happy to finish in anything under 10. Over two months I did my best to get in enough time in training for cycling, running and paddling. I’d squeeze in a cycle or run before work 2/3 times a week, most afternoons there’d be a run or a paddle. Living in Muizenberg means I had to:
drag myself to Cape Point on the road bike
run to Fishhoek along the sea by way of the boardwalk
a jog along Sunrise beach (Baywatch style)
paddle round Marina Da Gama
cart the mountain bike up and down Tokai Forest
Not exactly the gym of death, an absolute privilege to train in. I decided not to worry about the swimming, should only take half an hour and to forfeit other disciplines to gain five minutes didn’t really seem necessary. Also to cash in on the whole cross training vibe, I spent some time wavesailing, longboarding and even did Table Bay sailing week in the lead up to the event. The other big speedbump on the road to Men’s Health cover photo fitness was the whole Christmas holiday period. It got really hard to train when on holiday and lots of yummy food and drinking was all around! I kicked myself out of bed for the Tokai Manor House Classic at 7am on Boxing Day. 16km UP tokai forest in the rain, good training and enough to put you off turkey for life!
The registration was held the Thursday before the event at the hotel in Gordon’s Bay. The classic thing was that in the adjoining room was a Weigh-Less group meeting! Not knowing a soul, I had a lot of fun telling people that I was doing the whole thing when they asked me which leg I was doing. I got some really odd looks, and a few people questioning the amount of training gone in!
They recommend two support vehicles, and getting the canoe to Arabella about three hours before I’d need it. It’s possible to do it with only one, but quite a mission. Luckily I had my parents running around in the station wagon and Team Canada in my bakkie to help out. The basic split was the canoes with Renee (out traveling from Canada: www.getjealous.com/Reneeontheroad) and Jordan (one of my flatmates, from Montreal and working with Zackie at the TAC) and the bikes with the folks. It was quite a logistical exercise, mentally planning ahead on each leg for requirements both equipment and nutritionally. It all went off without a hitch, but I didn’t get to bed nearly as early as I wished the night before the race.
We got up at 4am and headed out to Gordon’s Bay in the dark, a beautiful windless day (hopefully) threatening to dawn. My strategy was to finish by pacing myself slowly enough so that I could give it stick if I was still feeling fresh on the mountain bike and beach run legs. NB! NB! – don’t try race the fast dudes when they overtake you, some of them are only doing a single leg. The male ego is a terrible thing, really.
I only picked up my borrowed surfski the day before, thinking that K1 training would be enough, and if the conditions were dodgy they would cancel the leg. Good call, settled into a nice rhythm once all the whitewater had dissipated and the super hotshots had disappeared into the distance. It was of course my first ever surfski race, and how far exactly is a 12km paddle? The route was 2 legs around a buoy 3km away, going past the yacht club/bikini beach. It was great turning around the mark and seeing some struggling dudes still behind me. I was feeling quite good at the halfway and picked up the pace a little, confident that I could hold it. Got a serious cramp after about an hour, and did my best not too think about it on the final lead in. Of course the swimmers were already in the water, and I could hear on the commentary that Natalie Du Toit had already done the first lap of the swim as I came in.
It was really nice to just dump all my stuff, and get handed a swimcap and goggles. I joined the mayhem in the water and took it really slow, just trying to get into a rhythm. It was quite hard navigating in the murky water, as it was hard to follow other people and the buoys were really small and were a similar yellow to the supplied swimcaps. I had a lot of people overtaking me, and could tell in the second lap that things were getting a lot quieter around me.
I had reckoned on a 30min swim (as I did the Fishhoek mile in about that time), but actually did it in about 38. The bar talk at the finish was that the swim course was a little bit longer than the expected 1.5km.
I got into my cycling kit, shoved some food down and then unfairly shouted at my parents who had given me only one water bottle for a 50km ride! I’d see them along the route for a resupply (just like the pros). The ride to Kleinmond goes along the Rooi Els Road, which was done many times in varsity days. It’s Cape Town’s other Chapman’s Peak and is definitely worth a drive. Due to the shortage of stopping points on the drive, the seconding teams could only support from the top of Rooi Els hill, 20km into the course. Luckily I picked up two guys on the way who were going at a fast enough pace for me to hang on and gain, but not too fast to tire me out. They were both quite happy for me to do none of the work, given my individual status. The leg flew by; hardly even noticed Betty’s Bay and managed to pull into the transition with an average speed of 32km/h. This was quite handy to stay in the race, as I had missed a lot of the big groups by hanging back in the swim.
The changeover was at the entrance to Kleinmond, another rushed switch to running kit (I really don’t know how the girls do it in the open!). It’s quite common to feel really wobbly on your legs when you change from bikes to running. This was no exception, and I had to warm up slowly before picking up the speed again. Once through the town, the route went through the finish area and then onto the main road to Arabella. It was a very good sign that none of the teams had finished yet. Once onto the road I noticed the kilometer posts, and took a time check. I’d planned to do a comfortable pace of roughly 5min/km, and gulped when I ate up the next km at 4:15. Obviously the excitement was getting to me, time to pull back the throttle again. I overtook a guy I recognized from my class at varsity just before the end; don’t want to have any engineering nerds beating me I thought! A serious amount of grey cloud was building on the seaside of the vlei. The weather prediction was for a bit of inclement weather and wind in the afternoon. I didn’t want to do the canoe paddle in a storm, so hurried as much as possible. Apparently I was catching Bruce Fordyce, but can’t confirm it!
The canoe option is to take a surfski if it’s too rough and oceanlike (or if you don’t have a K1), but there’s a lot of weed in the vlei, so your rudder collects a lekker drogue anchor if you’re not careful. It didn’t look too bad from the shore, and the surfski was still on the roof, so I went with the K1. I’ve been in some pretty rough wind on Sandvlei without ever swamping, and thought I could handle it without a splash cover. Silly me! Once round the first buoy we headed into the wind. After the second person told me I wouldn’t make it (I recognized her as one of the hardcore paddlers that’s always on the vlei), I went in and borrowed one from the first dude I could ask. Not bad for a stubborn mule like myself. I think he was one of the hotshot paddlers, and I almost ran off with his car keys in the dry pocket too! Needless to say, it only cost me 10 minutes, and I was pleasantly happy to hear the overall winner almost sank without one, but luckily found a sandbank to empty out on. The paddle itself was a real grind; I overtook a few hackers, but similarly got passed with effortless grace by some others. There were a few rescue boats on the water, a few of them helping out sinking K1’s. By the time we got to the turnaround mark, one of the rescue boats had actually capsized – on the mark of all places! I just looked at the guy next to me and laughed as we rounded five boats, all puzzled as to how they were going to right this speedboat. Downwind was a charm, but it’s always a little hairy when your bow digs into the preceding wave and stays there!
I came into the transition in pouring rain, all the seconds were huddled in a gazebo. My crowd were all together now that we’re on the penultimate stage, and had my bike ready for action. Wait stop, eat more, bite of a muffin, try swallow, banana, try swallow, sweets, swallow. Wait, I can carry this stuff and chow on the way, lets get going! We were actually at the water section of Le Grande Arrabella Hotel, I hadn’t noticed. The bike route follows the Highlands road, which goes all the way to Elgin and the N2. In other words-it’s a gravel Sir Lowry’s Pass. There was a short road section where I swapped drafting duty with an individual girl (damnit two beating me now!). She dropped me like a sack of potatoes on the first section of the 6km climb, but that’s okay cause I later found out who it was – Hanlie Booyens, one of the top female mtb riders in the country. The snazzy bike had put me off. Anyway, it rained and rained up the valley, I just stuck my old faithful in an easy gear and kept on plugging away. The poor dude manning the water point at the peak must have had enough, cold and tired, who was stopping for water in this weather (they had serious problems with dehydration in 30’C heat last year)? Somewhere on the first major descent I realized there was something seriously wrong with my brakes. No matter how I adjusted them from the handle bar, they just did not bite. I took the setting the whole way with no luck. On closer inspection, I had actually worn the back pads down with all the mud and grime; the disc brake on the front has been dodgy for a while. Maybe these things shouldn’t last six years?! I had been unable to slow down, saw it was getting steeper and did the only logical option – head off the track and aim for the biggest, fluffiest bush. Steep downhills would now be walked/ridden down astride the bike with one foot in the pedal, the other for brakes. I eventually stopped at the next support vehicle and with the help of another hand and a Leatherman, we flipped the brake pads and I now had a way to slow down. Unfortunately it was close to the end, but had a seriously steep concrete section which would have been quite interesting.
Coming in from the MTB leg, you are actually at the finish. How’s that for motivation to pull out (in front of the massage tent)? All that remained was the little issue of a 9km beach run. Kleinmond beach is not a happy place. The big debate was to go for shoes or barefoot. Take shoes and you can always carry them if the going gets too soft and tough. It is perilously steep at the waters edge and marshmallow soft on the flat dry bit. The waves come, go, do twirly whirly’s and everything else unpredictable. I alternated between the tyre tracks made by the quad bikes that must have set up the halfway point and the wetter sand near the water. It’s the lesser of two evils and very hard to pick. The shoes/barefoot debate was also hard to choose, so I stuck with mine on. After trying to evade the 10th onrushing wave (by running up the beach), I eventually got my feet wet. It felt like being shackled for the next ten steps. Luckily I seemed to be handling the stage better than other people, and was constantly overtaking groups. There was a fair amount of walking going on from some sorry looking faces, triples were even resorting to towing partners with kelp! Just before the turn around I passed the dude from class, I timed the gap at 2:30, and set about catching him on the way in. Time checks were taken at each piece of recognizable kelp/sand on the way. I caught him within 8 minutes, and did my best not to look back for the rest of the way. It was so important to get your mind off the conditions – walking is too easy, I’d definitely take my ipod with me next time. The final point was a large blow-up Powerade banner. Once it was recognizable, the realization set in that it was almost over. The vibe at the finish was really cool, your name comes over the PA system, lots of cheering..my seconds even handed me a towel as if I had just got a gold medal in the comrades. Quite satisfying to finish, my legs were pretty tired from the last leg, and I still haven’t looked at the state of the mountain bike from the ride. Got stuck into a pizza and tried to replace lost liquids by rotating powerades with windhoeks.
Great event, pretty well organized (I think, ask the seconds), who’s in for next year?
Here are the official stats:
Legs, including transitions:
Surfski 1:16
Swim 44
Ride 1:28
Run 0:58
Paddle 1:08
MTB 1:56
Beach 1:01
Total 8:31
13/34 individuals
The winners:
1st team: 5:23
1st pair: 5:58
1st trip: 6:11
1st Ind: 6:36
1st lady: 7:47
There were a few more photo’s, but Jordan’s camera got redistributed before he could download them (welcome to sunny SA)
Event info:
http://www.newbalance.co.za/ (check out the Xterra stuff whilst you’re there – April in Grabouw)
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