July 09: Nissan Sports Adventure Challenge Race Report - Luke Smith

Whyte Racer Luke Smith is a remarkable man. He is away in the wilds of Southern Africa for work and has been racing on his Whyte 19 carbon hardtail out there. Then someone asks him to take part in adventure race. This involves a canoe paddle, a gruelling run, two legs on the Whyte and a rock hopping scramble round an island. It’s the first time Luke has tried any of this – except the biking. And what does he do? He gets second place. Amazing! Read his report here.

Change is good….

In every walk of life plans change and I have been subject to a lot of change recently, the latest being another week in Botswana rather than heading back to SA.

So this meant cancelling the plans to compete in a mountain bike race as originally planned - no problems a few telephone calls and job done. The only problem was what was I going to do now?

Like I say I have had a lot of things changing in my life recently but I’m under the impression everything happens for good reason. A few hours after changing my plans, an employee from the company (whom I had never met before) approached me and explains that he had heard I was staying for another week and would I mind representing the company in an Adventure race this weekend?

Perfect - I thought. That is until after I actually looked into what the race entailed.

The race in question was the Nissan Sports Adventure Challenge, to be based in the gorgeous surroundings of the Gaborone Dam.

The first leg was a paddle - not too bad I thought, my swimming is ok, I read on to realise it was in canoes/kayaks and the approximate distance was 8.5km! I haven’t been in canoe since I was a kid let along the possibility of racing one for around 1 hour on the water!

The second leg was a run/hike for 12km through the bush I can live with this I thought. I’m not a natural runner but I can get by.

The course was only 8km long but then I read on further “beware its quite overgrown and has some nasty ankle-biting thorns. It is 8km long with some 330m of altitude gain,240m of it in the first 1.6km” a casual stroll – NOT!!!

The third and forth legs are both on the MTB, at long last an opportunity to regain some time as I’m can only assume I will lose a fair bit on the water!

The course climbs over a large hill as well so hopefully will suit me. Each leg was approx 17km.

Then its back to the transition zone for the final leg Rock- hop – I must admit I didn’t even know what this was and had all sorts of images in my head imaging leaping off one huge rock to the next, thankfully I was informed it was more like a rock scrabble around a small island. I had learnt how to negotiate the rocks whilst crab fishing on the south coast this didn’t faze me (can’t get better training than that for an adventure race!)

So I signed the form and committed to taking part – that was the easy part.

With only a couple of days left before the race I had no time for any specific training and rather risk going out running and picking up an injury I did what I knew best and carried on training on my bike.

I went along on the Friday evening to sign on only to witness some guys picking up some serious speed aboard their canoes; this raised my concern as to how much time I could potentially lose on the water, and made me think I should have really tried to get some practise in before hand.

We signed in and collected a goody bag before heading off. Next time I would be back would be early Sunday morning ready for the 8 o’clock start.

Nissan Sports Adventure Challenge Race Report

The race was due to start at 8 o’clock unfortunately breakfast doesn’t start at the hotel until 7 on Sunday, fine I thought I will get in there quick and wolf down as much as possible in a short space of time before quickly heading over to the race. Alarm clock set I hit the pillow early ready for a goods night’s sleep.

Only to be woken at 6 o’clock by an SMS from the company organiser asking us to all meet there for 7:00. Oh dear I thought what am I going to eat – I literally had nothing in the hotel room. I got ready and started driving to the venue stopping at the first petrol station in an attempt to find sufficient food to get me through the race. I managed to find a couple of cereal bars and that was about as close as I could get to anything resembling good pre-race food, they would have to do - great preparation two cereal bars!

I arrived at the venue at 7o’clock as planned and straight away went to the organiser to see what the situation was with borrowing a canoe (on Friday they had said to arrive earlier so they have sufficient time to arrange one). Unfortunately/fortunately there wasn’t enough to go around and priority went to relay teams. I was actually pleased to hear him say this because the canoe leg would surely have been my worst discipline and I would have probably lost a lot of time on the water.

So the race was now to start with a run, looking around on the start line I knew I was going to be in for a hard time anyone who has ever seen any long distance running knows the African nations are a force to be reckoned with. I didn’t fancy my chances!

We started and I settled into a decent sized group at a reasonable pace that I was fairly ok with, the route started on open jeep tracks before heading into some singletrack, this was ok part from the thorn bushes cutting both my arms and legs to pieces and then came the tricky part. The run course was taking us over the iconic Gaborone landmark Kgale. The run turned into more of a scramble/rock climbing; at times I was stood at the foot of huge rocks just thinking “so how do I get up this” a ladder could have quite easily been used in some cases (where would the adventure be in that though!). I actually held my own heading up the hill overtaking a few guys. Upon reaching the summit I quickly glanced over my shoulder and had to double take the views were astonishing, I will definitely be heading back up (at a more leisurely pace for some pictures!)

Heading back down I started struggling a bit, my legs weren’t to happy with the idea at descending at speed and the guys I had overtaken on the way up started to come back past, at the bottom we entered the bush to Mokolodi the local game reserve (there is actually still some rhinos in this park however I was only lucky enough to see some ostriches). It was here we started the first mountain bike leg, this was my chance to really pull back some positions I hammered out of the transition along some excellent singletrack, shortly after however I managed to lose the circuit makers and found myself lost. I had to retrace my tracks until I found the course again; retaking the riders I had flown past moments earlier. The course took us over a couple of hills and through three knee deep river crossings back to Mokolodi. The second MTB leg took us back to the Yacht club at the Dam with more great singletrack and a great descent. Unfortunately once again I managed to lose my way and lost some more valuable time retracing my tracks!

At the Yacht club it was the start of the infamous rock-hop to the finish. This was a bit dangerous but what made it worse was how tired I was after 3:40mins of running and cycling, but it was thankfully only a short route round the island up to the finish line! Which marked the start of a great post race party!!!

When I crossed the line I was totally unaware of my finishing position with teams on the circuit along with individual competitors it proved difficult to judge your position (getting lost twice didn’t help either).

The timekeeper approached me “well done - second place” I was pleasantly surprised I knew the MTB leg had gone well but this was really a bit of a shock!

Second place in my first adventure race, who knows if I hadn’t had got lost I may have made the top step of the podium!