Team BAMF Race Report

We had a hard but fun race. This is the type of race which ups the learning curve, make you think twice about skimping on mandatory gear and appreciate the true spirit of AR.

Unusual work and traffic had us arrive late on friday night, thanks to all the teams for waiting for us. With only 3 hours sleep we lined up for race start at 4h00, 3x experienced racers and 1x novice (thanks Nathan for filling in).

Leg 1 was a quick 5 km orienteering leg, with cp2 and cp3 being switched around having us lose 5 min... Little did we know that the 5 mins would mean nothing compared to what lay ahead!

Leg 2 was a beautiful 10km paddle on the Ebenezer dam as daylight broke through, we moved swiflty in our K2's.

Leg 3 had us hike "7km" on hiking trails outside Haenertsburg. We opted for a clever route option by the roadside, which led us to the correct spot for the next cp, unfortunately we were struck by temporary bat illness and missed the path leading up the mountain. Along with some other "you shouldn't follow other teams" teams we made a little 3km detour back to where we were, then found the cp and then continued correctly.

Leg 4 was a 50km bike from town. straight forward and easy navigation. Not so straight forward and easy riding... Apart from our initial bike problems we got going up the first steep climb, which we later found out was just a bump in the road... Approximately halfway in the leg we went up the "little bit of climbing" hill - roughly 5km of chaining granny's neck off - where we went into an old mine tunnel to find a cp which was a wet and fun exercise. To some of our surprize the upward trend did not dissapate. The next cp was in a proper cave, the path lined with outdoor displays from New Balance, ironic as we were all wearing bike shoes hiking up a hill to a cave. The cave was an awesome sight with all the stalachtites and stalachmites. On we pushed to the next transition with a bit of relief in altitude.

Leg 5 was a 15km hike/ kloofing section. Started with a long steep downhill jeep track, making us worried about coming back at night... We got to the river and traversed down waterfalls with wonderfully cool water. One of the cp was at the base of a splendid waterfall, the other "inside the waterfall". Eventually the river leveled out and we had a little bit of bundu bashing to reach the notorious cp8............ So we got to the rock pile indicating the road,went up the road and after about 15mins realised we were moving north and the map shows we should be moving south! The sun was setting and we didn't want to spend the night in the kloof, we backtracked quickly, surveyed to the nearest sqaure meter every bit of the river by the rockpile, and eventuallu deceided to just follow the road up again "in the wrong direction". Some 300meters after the point we had originally turned around we got to cp8 and realised that we had again befallen some bat illness.... So we slogged up an extremely steep ant trail, forever. When forever had passed we got to transition and decided to take a little break and dress warm for the quick 30km bike which lay ahead.

Leg 6 was a 30km bike, at night for us, which started with an awesome technical downhill through plantations and natural forrest! Unfortunately not everyone in the team had equal tech skills and we ended up doing 10km downhill in 1h30. But that's what team sport is all about, sticking with your mates through thick (bush) and thin (tempers), good (night time nav) and bad (day time nav).... We were fortunate to be able to use our newly befallen bat skills to not make mistakes at night and had a straight forard cycle back to the dam. We got a bit worried when we started hearing the rumbles of thunder behind us, but hey - we couldn't go any faster anyway.

Leg 7 was a final 10km paddle back to the start/finish at Stanford school. Night time nav on a paddle is pretty easy if you have calm flat water, shore lights, no wind and clear skies. We had all of this for the first 5 km. then we started moving into the more remote areas of the dam - suddenly the skies closed up, the shore lights dissapated and the mist came in with a cold brisk breeze. We started to doubt in our bat senses (yee of little faith!), after a 5 min deliberation (which had an undertone of bitter frustration) we continued paddling along the shore as it was at least not freezing when we were active. And BINGO was his namo - we could hear the little waterfall where we had to portage up to the next lake before the school's lake. Swearing featured as the prodominant night sounds as we struggled the K2's up the steep bank through the bundus. All clear from here, or not? Another thick reed bundu bash to get to the weir, to get over the rocks onto the school grass to launch again, to paddle 30m to the finish! We thought that was a bit of an insult to injury, but anyway - we were finally finished, six hours later than expected, after 24h45.

Thanks again to Red Ants, their marshalls, and all involved!

With our newly aquired bat skills we are thinking of changing our team name from BAMF to Bat-MF.... Haha

PS: team BAMF is looking for a 4th to join our constant team (or at least for Double Moon). Pref strong and competitive, with some experience and gear. Contact Carel in this regard.

See you at Senseless.

Team BAMF
Carel, Charl, Lizelle, and guest star Nathan