In addition to Clinton's investment in Lisa's Abu Dhabi team's paddling, Ryno and the squad from Gravity Training spent a morning with the development team on some basic ropes skills customized for Adventure Racing. This included equipment, knots, absailing, locking off of devices, jumarring and WHAT TO DO WITH YOUR COMPULSORY ROPE...See http://teamwwwarcoza.blogspot.com/2010/07/ropes-skills-workshop-morning.html  for Lisa's full reoprt and photos on the day.

Team First Ascent Cyanosis raced the 130 km Kinetic Full Moon this Saturday eve with regular team members Clinton Mackintosh and Ryno Griesel and the addition of super Steve ! Steve Saunders from EMT (Equipment Motivated Training), dear friend, super athlete, navigator and our team contact with our sponsor Suunto wriststop computers.

Although Steve has raced competitive AR quite a few years back, he was once again re-united with his passion for AR this weekend - SO WATCH THIS SPACE ! Ask him about EMT and Suunto at the next event.

For full details about the event visit : http://www.kineticgear.co.za/Kinetic/KineticFullMoonAdventure/tabid/15807/Default.aspx

Stephan, Heidi and team once again put on an unforgettable race experience, with the four winter paddle legs with 3 big guys on a Fluid Synergy and the 50km cycle at minus 3 degrees standing out as highlights to me.

We managed a 5th overall finish, officially 4th and second all male to finish. We started at 13h00 on Saturday and finished around 6am on Sunday morning.

Well done to team Red Ants (winners and mixed) and team Olympus (closely second and winners of all male category) on leaving the rest of us in your dust.

The team (Alex Pope, Jane Swarbreck and Ryno Griesel) managed a win in the mixed category of the Kinetic sprint #2 on Sunday 30 May 2010 in a fast time of 1h19min, an odd 7 minutes behind the winning male team of USN (Brian Gardner, Ryan Hordiene and Piers Pierow), thus claiming a respectable second place overall.

The closest competetitors in the mixed category came in at 1h41min, and the third overall team came in on 1h32. 

For full results and reports visit www.kineticgear.co.za
Photos coutesy of the team Captain and professional photographer : Nicholas Mulder



Alex (front), Jane and Ryno on one of the 2 paddles


Left : Alex leading the team into the obstacle course
Right : Jane waiting patiently for Ryno to overcome his fear of heights :-)




Running into the finish : from left - Ryno, Alex, Jane


Winning smiles

... but the "view" from the summit of achieving anything worth-while in life makes up for it.

I had the coldest cycle this morning in a long time on the road (since Portugal ARWC) and enjoying a post ride coffee and I thought i'd share some philosophical "views" from my berg trip a weekend or so ago with Susan around the sentinal area.


This is what I live for.



The single track (left) up to Sentinal... the start of the DGT


Two rainbows post thunderstorm


View of the road up to the Sentinal car park



Watrefall lower down amonst the foothills of Royal Natal
park.