Expedition Africa Full Moon Kouga Adventure Race

Our first adventure race… not sure how to navigate through it all, but we did start with an awesome team and finished with a kick-ass team!!

Like everything else we split the responsibility of a race report. James gave some insight of how he ended up joining a rookie team and together with Nic they pretty much plagiarized one another’s words on the training as a team, racing as a team and

the Full moon Kouga race itself and its team. Kev covered the paddling leg, a not so familiar discipline for him, while I (Monica) tried to blend it all together with my 5c on the cycle legs, since it’s not my strongest point.

It all boiled down to the fear of missing out aka “FOMO”. Nic got the “3 rookies” together, Nic and me both suffering from FOMO since Expedition Africa passed Plettenberg Bay in 2016 and Kev instantaneously grabbed the “Cape St Francis” carrot. We entered the Full moon Kouga Expedition as team Bikeshop. We were still short a member and most importantly a navigator. While puzzling, this happened not so far away…

James: Having badly rolled an ankle in my first training session after EA 2018 I knew that taking on The Kouga Full Moon 120km Adventure Race would be a big ask. Not being able to run in a short race like this is not ideal. Luckily our BUCO Adventure squad has a couple of arrows in its quiver and it was a no brainer for Andrew Von Blom to race with the three from EA 2018. That was fine for them, two days of

FOMO got even worse when Nic van den Handel called to say he had entered a Team. Flip I need to make

a plan here and quick, the race was filling up and I was in serious risk of missing out. I strapped my ankle and went for a quick run hike and decided that if I just TT….U I could survive the 30km on foot the race would have, the other legs would have to look after themselves . I then forced myself into the Team that had called themselves The Bike Shop and with that dragged my 25% BUCO Adventure label and Team Bike Shop BUCO Adventure was formed.

When I say we started with an awesome team we really did!! Our goals – 1) Get a Team of 4 people to the start line, 2) Get a team of 4 into the race and to the finish line and 3) Have everyone hungry for more and to do it again. Since the 3 rookies were all new to paddling, Mondays became our paddle days with boats borrowed from The Keurbooms Lagoon Caravan Park the idea of 10 kms in the Fluid Bath Tubs became real. James put an after dark paddle, run/hike and ride with some nav thrown in mix together.

That bought us to the reality that this quick 120km would still take us the best part of 12-14 hours! Never the less we still trained with lots of enthusiasm.

And before we knew it race day loomed with all its packing and unpacking, excitement and a little bit of nerves, we were ready and set.

A better introduction into adventure racing is impossible to imagine, Expedition Full Moon Kouga exceeded all expectations. We were blown away by the smooth operation that Heidi, Stephan and their team put together and ran like clockwork. Thank you for sharing the love for adventure!!!

Our team was incredible, James let us do our thing, just gently nudging us in the right direction and we ran like a well-oiled machine from the first stride, through every pedal and paddle stroke right to the finish line.

James soldiered through the 30kms running/hiking legs, split equally into our first leg and second last leg, like a true commodore, strapped ankle and all!! The 10km paddle turned from Kevin’s least favorite discipline to his most preferred leg of the race after our training sessions paid off and we glided through the water as one on an incoming tide. I off course picked up a “stompie” that there was to be a technical downhill and I almost swallowed it. We had a 45km cycle for the second leg and finishing the race with 36kms on the last leg. I got off to a great start falling over just past the first corner. We laughed it off and Kevin reminded me I’ll be fine (since we did have a separate training session or two on my skills) I soon happily snaked through the sand alongside the guys. We got to have a few laughs with “Slummies lite” and before I knew it the cycling legs were done and dusted sanded.

We ticked all the boxes on our goal list and going thru the pictures of the race we raced so well together that almost every frame taken contains four happy people. One of James’s favorite shots of the race above just behind the Cape St Francis Lighthouse shows the Team running in time together and that’s how it stayed. The banker shot is all the smiles at prize giving (a 7^th place adding to the width).

We would like to thank all our supporters (the wives especially, putting up with all the training!), Glenn Murray for capturing our happiness and the Bikeshop and BUCO for powering us! With a special mention to SIS for ensuring we were hydrated throughout the race and the Keurbooms lagoon caravan park for putting up with our annoying paddle training sessions!