Merrell Adventure Addicts' Expedition Africa race report

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Tuesday, 17 May 2011 12:14

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The four Addicts' take on Expedition Africa

Graham “Tweet” Bird’s report:

Over the past few years the Merrell Adventure Addicts have competed in numerous Adventure Racing World Series Races all over the globe. When we heard in the second half of 2010 that Kinetic (Stephan and Heidi Muller) would be putting on a 500km Expedition Adventure Race here in South Africa we were tremendously excited! The last 500km expedition style race held in South Africa was in August 2008. Finally all the local Adventure Racers in South Africa could get to experience a “long” expedition style race that we so loved to do and we would be able to race in our wonderful country!

When our team met to set our goals and objectives for 2011, Expedition Africa was highlighted as a priority together with the Adventure Racing World Championships (ARWC) in Tasmania, Australia in November 2011. We decided our year would be broken into two, with the first build up being to Expedition Africa and the second being to ARWC. Having competed in numerous Adventure Racing World Series Races around the globe, the team has gain a large amount of experience at racing these long expedition races. Through these races we had our fair share of ups and downs with some races going our way and others not.  In all our team discussions in building up to Expedition Africa we felt it was time to change our normal race strategy, which had always seen us start more conservatively and come through stronger in the later stages. Though this strategy had worked well on some races it had also cost us positions in others.  We decided that it was time that we tried going out hard from the start and trying to maintain the pace through the race. The Expedition Africa was an ideal race for us to work on changing our strategy. When Kinetic announced a few weeks before the start that they expected the leaders to take approximately 54 hours, this confirmed our thoughts and made it clear that a change in strategy was needed in order to secure the top position, which we had set as our goal.

To say our preparations for Expedition Africa had gone well would be an exaggeration. Each of us had suffered setbacks through the preceding months, none more so than Tatum whom went through some hectic setbacks. But such is the support, strength and dynamics in our team that we all got through and arrived at the race in fine form and excited to be racing in South Africa again.

Aside from the fact that this race was on home soil, the pre race packing and logistical arrangements were easy compared to the previous expedition style events that we have done. This was a combination of the experience, giving us an understanding of exactly what we needed and the fact that the race organisers, Kinetic, had made things as simple as possible for teams to just arrive at the start. They had provided the race kayaks, race boxes and the bike boxes. In addition the race registration, briefing, map and course book handout, gear checks, transition box hand-in were all well organised and structured by Kinetic in such a way to reduce the stress on us the racers and make it as painless a process as possible. By 16h00 on Sunday, a full 15 hours before race start we had completed all our preparations. This gave us a full eight hours sleep before meeting at the race village at 05h30 on Monday, 9^th May for transport to the start.  This was awesome and something I don’t think I have ever experienced in a race before.  It allowed one to arrive at the start relaxed and well rest rather than in the usual tired and panicked state.

The race was made up of 11 legs with approximately: 127km of trekking over 5 legs; 50km paddling over 2 legs; 323km mountain biking over 4 legs.  Based on the information we had been provided at the briefing, the race booklet, the maps and the Q & A session, we had produced a race guide (see inserted) which we carried showing the legs and all the various information we needed in order to carry out our race strategy. We had predicted a race time of approximately 51h30.  We realized this was an estimate as we were still to see the actual maps for the second half of the race.

The first paddle leg had been planned to include 8km of sea paddling from the new harbour in Hermanus, via the old harbour, to the lagoon mouth at the Grotto. Being a team that was proficient in paddling we were relishing the idea of this leg and looking forward to hopefully opening up a small margin on the other teams.  On the morning of the start, the race director made the decision to cancel the sea paddling portion of the paddle due to high winds and a rough sea. Though I could understand and sympathize with the race director, I felt that by race directors in local races continually cancelling or amending paddling legs condones the fact that local Adventure Racing teams do not get out there and train their paddling.