31 July 2011

 

A fast race with some great competition 45 teams made the start line, Cynaosis represented by Alex; Jane & Clinton

Jabali Private Game Reserve
This was expected to be a fast race with some great competition 45 teams made the start line, Jane Swarbreck; Alex Pope & Clinton Mackintosh made up the Cyanosis team that would race this winter event.  As usual the Senseless team organised another super event just 45min north of Pretoria in a pristine bush environment. 

 

The Jabali Private Game Reserve (http://www.jabali.co.za/) was the host for the winter edition of the Senseless AR series. 

We all hoped that when we drove in to the Jabali reserve that the radio masts on top of the nearby mountain would have been a no go area because a farmer was not happy with crazy people running across his land but I now believe this landowner thought it would be more entertaining see the devastation  “Boy was he well entertained…”  The race started with 2.5km run that would see teams collect additional maps for leg 2 as well as collect some additional CP’s along the way.  Leg two was an optional cycle up to the radio mast or run up the mountain on a more direct route to the top collecting CP’s along the way.  We collected all the points on leg 1 and decided that the best option for leg 2 would be to hi-tail it straight up the mountain on foot rather than doing the 15km odd on our Specialized MTB’s.  This went rather smoothly at first and we were chased hard by two teams, a mail pair and the young team of PS who put in a huge effort to push us on the run.  We hit the base of the mountain and then it went vertical, the climb had us maxed out at 97% heart rate and we thought we were losing time by our pace slowing down to a crawl but this seemed to be the same for everybody.  We hit the top still in 1st followed by the mail pair, we checked in at the mast CP and the next couple of CP’s would be straight back down the HUGE mountain we just climbed.  We were passed by the mail pair who literally ran down the technical slopes and they managed to put in 3min on to us by the time we reached the transition.   

We decided that we would do the optional obstacle course last so it was a quick transition for us on to our bikes.  The mail pair decided to do the obstacle course before entering the transition which gave us around 5min lead on to the bikes.  We literally flew on the bike leg checking every available CP with pin point accuracy with superb navigation by Alex, Jane and I only needed to make sure we kept a high pace and stay glued to Alex’s wheel.  We returned to the transition in record time surprizing the organizers with our MTB leg time, we quickly transitioned on to the penultimate leg that would see us back on foot collecting other CP’s and a horse ride.  The horse ride was a fun inclusion in to the race but was on a first come first serve basis and teams could choose their legs in any order so there was no guarantee of having three horses available.  We were just 2min too late to secure three horses which meant that Alex and I would be running this 2km leg while Jane who is very easily at home on the back of a horse would be riding the stead.  We still did not know how far ahead we were of the male pair as there were teams everywhere, the only thing we could do was give it our all for the remaining 6-7km.  When we thought we would have seen the last of the mountain in leg 2 the organisers thought it appropriate to put an optional OP about 100m up the mountain which we had to get to ensure we had every available CP & OP on the course.  We arrived back at the transition for the last leg which was a short obstacle course which took us less than 5min to complete.  We crossed the line to take 1st overall and 1st mixed team in 2h36min with Here de Dragons (men’s pair) finishing 2nd in 2h58min. 

The race was again very well organized by a very enthusiastic team of adventure racers themselves.  We would like to thank the Senseless Team for putting on a great event as well as would like to thank our sponsors who without their continued support would not be able to participate.

 

Team Cyanosis

 

In picture from left to right - Cyanosis's Alex Pope, Clinton Mackintosh, Jane Swartbreck & Steven Yates (Sensless Organiser)