IT Consultancy and Adventure Racing

http://www.bullofafrica.com/

In it's first season of racing, team 4TC has enjoyed some successful outings in 48hr and shorter races in Australia and NZ, and targeted a couple of expedition races to see how we gel as a team. Later on in the year we will be tackling the relatively familiar XPD in Thredbo, but first we would be experiencing something new to all of us by heading to South Africa for August's 'Bull of Africa'.

Arriving at the Balugha Inn outside East London we spent the first 3 days acclimatising and planning the 80% of the race route that we had been given.

We had 3 race boxes to organise, that we would see at riughly the 1/4, half way and 3/4 raxe distance points, and we had the route book for all of the first 3 and the start of the 4th section - we were just missing details of the final day back to the Balugha Inn, to stop us scoping out the route.

Saturday morning was nowhere near dawning when we boarded buses at 3am to be taken out to the Katberg eco and golf resort where our race would be starting with a purportedly 10km trail run.

Getting off the run in the top 10 we headed out on a bike leg that would be interrupted by a lake paddle rogaine, and take us through to dusk, passing the americans 'feed the machine' on the way, but then letting them and the Aussie 'Bunker Capital Blackheart' team beat us out of transition. At least in part this was due to me melting down at the end of the ride and being busy replenishing fluids and nutrition rather than watching out for other teams.

The first tramp started with some issues caused by trying to align tourist and 'proper' maps, but we soon got onto the forestry roads that we would follow onto the long distance footpath that we would follow for most of the 90 odd km!

Finding a trampers hut at a suitable time, we got away from the freezing weather and huddled together for a couple of hours of shuteye, setting the intended sleep attern for the race.

This tramp ended with a slog up a huge hill, then walking down a ridge to the transition area set up in someone's preserved historical village, where we arrived just before dusk. Setting up and then getting some sleep in the provided beds before heading out into the cold.

Again the leg started with a navigational error that mimicked a few other teams, and then we only had to contend with the cold as we headed towards a dawn lake paddle. Due to the temperature we again set up the gear and had a brief sleep before heading out for a 4hr paddle once the sun started to make an appearance.

Back onto the bikes and we rode through the day and through some lovely hunting lodges, till we arrived at Clinton Grange Lodge.

Unfortunately our pace had slowed somewhat throughout the afternoon, and there was a lot of coughing and spluttering in the team, so we packed the bikes up using the remnants of the light, got checked out by a medic and decided to have a 3 hour sleep and then reappraise.

This progressively turned into a 12 hour sleep and it was obvious that Grant and Matt were in no state to continue - fluid on the lungs does that!

Danielle and I hung around till around midday when a composite team of 6 arrived, comprising of 3 members each of 'kreatures.co.nz' and 'toppie en die laaities', and agreed that we could join them in the onward journey.

The immediate onward journey was to be a second 24+ hour tramp where once again the Go Fast gum kept us going through the night until about 4 o'clock and approaching the ropes section we decided to sleep as our navigator was doing a good impression of the walking dead.

The morning saw us quickly onto a 3 stage rope ascent, followed by a vicious midday walk through a 35+ degree valley, and then into the next TA where Matt was waiting to rejoin us for the next leg.

Some tedious road riding was followed by a magic descent and then we were riding through proper african villages all the way to the coast.

Ending the leg at a seaside resort, Matt and Danielle were suffering again, and I was left to carry on with the South Africans for the last 36 hours or so.

A long, spectacular and dangerous (ask the kid that came within 2 feet of walking onto the puff adder) trek deposited us at the Seagulls resort, where we marked up maps, slept, and then headed out on the final ride.

Taking us through the night and all day, this 'ride' included 4 of us having to abseil down a waterfall, and later had all of us crossing the Kei river with our bikes. Thankfully a little local ingenuity saw a surfski commandeered, and most of the team ferried across by the very skilled paddling of Roland while I grabbed some shuteye on the bank, apparently when the bikes were piled 3 high there was some concern, but they all crossed safely.

From here what looked like a relatively short ride managed to take us most of the day, and we arrived at the inkwenkwezi game park for a short foot section that took us through until just after dusk - not helped by the amount of time spent searching for the only misplaced control of the race. We never found it, but apparently it was a few hundred metres down stream of it's mapped location, not too bad for 50 controls!

As we returned to the bikes it started to drizzle, and this would continue building towards a steady downpour as we finished the race, riding through the game park the group managed to get split up a bit, but we reformed by the time it came to getting on the road, and we hustled along to the Areena resort, where Coen's wife was thankfully on hand with the code to get through the automatic gate.

After a rebriefing by a very tired pair of american volunteers (who spent most of the time apologising to a very annoying and stroppy american in another team) who even supplied us with pizza, it was into the boats for a short jaunt down the river.

I was in a boat with one of the lads from a schoolboy team who were making history as the first school team ever to finish an expedition race, and it was nice to hear that this tough course hadn't put him off-plans were already to do more.

We left the boats at the mouth of the river with the unluckiest marshal on the course-probably the only one that got cold and wet in his lightweight tent on a river flat, and headed off on the final leg.

A walk along a waterfront would have been too much fun on it's own, so Hano had thrown in a final CP on top of the last hill before the Balugha finish line, thankfully only a hundred or so metres tall, but annoying nonetheless.

And then that was it-a final jog down the road and across a finish line with a bunch of locals who were instantly surrounded by friends and family, all very civilised!

Obviously this was an interesting event as it changed from a race where 4TC were being reasonably competitive through the realisation that we couldn't continue into a tour of a lovely scenic country with a bunch of locals .. which ended up being as much fun as racing.