Day 6. The Final Push

Sleep deprivation is an insiduous thing. We have all heard of various symptoms including; poor decision making, mumbling, staggering and hallucinations (sleepmonsters). When we fell asleep in the dunes we had planned to get up at 4:30, and in fact, Del, Luke and Stew all did wake up at this time and then, comfortable in the knowledge that the other two had decided that we all needed another 2 hours sleep, settled back down to get up at 6:30. When we next woke up we silently got our gear together and moved on, careful not to wake the Russian girls from team Areena, who had decided to sleep adjacent to us in the dunes. Back at the river a couple of local lads ferried us and our old friends Outdoor Extreme, who had arrived at the river at the same time as us, across the river in their Canadian Canoes.

On the way to the wreck of the Jacaranda (which was a CP) the issue of the extra two hours sleep came up in conversation.
Stew: "I can't say I'm sorry you two decided on another 2 hours sleep, but how come, three hours should have been heaps?"
Luke: "How should I know, you and Del made the decision not me"
Stew: "No way, Del told me that the two of you decided to wait until dawn, Del; are you playing us off against one another, so you can get more sleep?"
Del: "Piss off, as if I'd be the one needing more sleep? You were the one that said wait until 6:30"
Grant; "Hey guys, what's going on? I feel great, that sleep was the best, Gee Luke's good to cuddle up to, how far to the next CP? must be time for some more video, how's everybody else feeling? it was good to get ahead of the Russian girls wasn't it? I wonder if we're still ahead of the Americans? cereal in a bag tastes good hey! Do you reckon we're top 10 still, Gee I hope so, my knee hurts, how's everybody else feeling"
Stew: "Well we should try and push on to the finish now without any more sleeps"
Luke: "We're not stopping again"

The wild coast lived up to it's reputation; rugged and wild, we were treated to 5-6 foot sets and perfectly clean breakers rolling along the reefs, empty, except for the white pointer sharks and a pod of pilot whales (I think, or they could have been orcas or bloody big dolphins). We kept the pace hard and raced to Seagulls Ocean Resort. This was were the CP's ran out. We were issued with the rest of the course at this point. Lukie quickly copied down the location of the new CP's while the rest of us readied the bikes and got our gear and food organised. This was the last time we would see our gear boxes, so everything we needed for the rest of the race needed to be carried from here to home. The last ropes section was only 5 km up the road, it required only two of us to complete an abseil and Jumar. So we hurried on up to it, as these sections are notorious bottlenecks.

While Luke and Del rearranged gear and plotted the rest of the course, Grant and Stew got to play around in a waterfall. A quick 15 m abseil down the waterfall, followed by a swim across a brain shrinkingly cold pool, snap a CP, swim back, Jumar up, try and wipe the grin off your face, cause it's so much bloody fun, back on the bikes and resume racing.

The next section of MTB was not a happy one for us. We failed to find the track down to the river until we bunderbashed and hike-a-biked across a hill for 30 minutes, when we eventually got down to the river we had to swim our bikes across it (and it was salt water. Yes, bikes do float, and yes they will need a rebuild when they get home, and yes Grant did cry as his 'Kenny' Cannondale Rush hit the water and yes we did manage to hit high tide; AGAIN). Once across the river we headed back to the coast. At least this time there was enough wet sand to ride our bikes along, until we ran out of sand and had to carry the bikes over coastal rocks. The track then went up onto the sea cliffs and we followed along a narrow coastal track probably just wide enough to land a skinny seagull. Riding along, I though I heard one of those skinny seagulls calling out. I turned around in time to see Del tumble off her bike and down about three meters, self arresting a couple of meters above the next sheer drop. My chivalrous gesture of a helping hand was abruptly spurned, and my sympathetic description of the chain of events that led to Del's unfortunate demise was only grunted at, any hint of smile, laugh or even chuckle for the next hour was countered with a glare that would freeze your blood.

When the decision needed to be made at the next CP to take either the inland route or the coastal route, it was not hard to work out which way Del was going to vote. Grant too had seen his bike in salt water and sand too much already and Luke was worried that if there was a lot of rocks we could lose more time, so the decision was made. In the end we arrived back at the coast after a very long inland route which culminated in climbing a razor wire gate with the sign; "This property is protected by tactical response troops". The local farm worker assured us no-one had been shot in a loooong time and 'Yes this was the road to the beach', so expecting to see the orange dot of a laser guided sniper rifle on our chests at any moment we headed off with some trepidation. Thanking God it had been a fast and downhill all the way to the beach, we started the last coasteering section on our bikes before heading in Inkwenkwezi Game Reserve.

With other teams hot on our heels we grabbed a CP and headed off to the rogaine section. It was in this TA that we realised we had overtaken the Uruguans and the French Team, Epitact, who we'd last seen on day two of the race, we also still had Extreme Outdoors hot on our heels and Pro Pepto ahead of us. Pro Pepto had taken off 1 hour ahead of us on the beach trek from Mazepha Bay, so with our long sleep in the Dunes were an unknown factor. The rogaine was frustrating with one of the CP's not where it was shown on the map. We lost contact with the French, and not knowing whether they were in front or behind us, pushed hard to collect the rest of the CP's and get back to our bikes. We still had several CP's to collect before starting the next paddle section. These proved difficult to find in the dark and we lost 30 minutes after we missed a track turnoff to a deserted farmhouse, we had been going for 18 hours with only two 20 minute breaks, sleep deprivation was starting to kick in again for some of us, while the pressure of maintaining our spot in the top 10 was playing on the others. It was a tense time, which was releaved by the sight of wild game in our bike lights. In particular, as Del found a CP in an erosion gully, Grant and I from the road above could see the shapes of about half a dozen lions as they stalked towrds her until they were about 5 meters away and looking hungrily down at her in the gully as she blissfully unaware, stamped the control card. The lions were in an enclosure,so there was never any real risk of her being eaten, I just hope the fence was in better condition than some of the others we had crossed in the game reserve.

We moved on to the Areena game reserve where we were chased by a tame giraffe and then after some running around finally found the TA to the kayaks. Getting into the boats we were amped about getting to the finish line, just two more CP's to go, a 4 km paddle and 3 km trek. Home for breakfast. The paddle was straightforward, although the tide was again racing, thankfully it was heading in the right direction for a change. Now only one more CP, but we had seen the French team walking to the boats soon after we started the paddle, so they were hot on our heels. The last CP was on top of a sand dune. The dune was covered in the thickest, prickliest scrub Hano could find. I went up first, and lacking confidence in Hano's CP location descriptions, gave up when it wasn't on the high point of the dune, then Luke went up, then Grant, finally Luke came down with the prize and we headed up the road.

It was a very relieved team that left the vicinity of the sand dune and didn't have to race any other teams up the hill to the finish line. The relief was tangible as we headed towards the line. Joking, and laughing and looking forward to a shower and a sleep [ ed. strangely enough I think Grant and Luke shared a single bed that morning, the habit just too strong to break straight away]. We crossed the line in eigth place and showered each other in peach champagne. The French came in just 20 minutes behind us and Pepto Pro aboubt 2 hours in front. I think we again, surprised a lot of people with how well we performed. It was a super tough race, even by international standards, with close to 22,000 vertical meteres of climbing and descending. We came through in good health and in good spirits. While many teams wilted over the closing stages of the course, we were able to keep racing strongly and made up at least four places and held off another strong finishing SA team.

Thanks go to our sponsors; KEEN footwear and Torq Nutrition Australia, the race directors Hano and Sonja Otto, for putting on a superb race, our families for all the encouragement, sympathy, support, compassion, patience and money and of course my team mates who are the best bunch of guys you could ever hope to hang out with and who make any and all the deprivation worthwhile.

Stewart