Uplands Adventure Race 2008

Adventure Racing at Uplands College is in its second year. In a classical sense, adventure racing is an endurance sport where competitors compete in teams of four, navigating from checkpoint to checkpoint to cover vast areas in a number of disciplines.

Eleven teams took part, using a map to navigate as GPS-assisted navigation was not allowed. This is where the whole ‘strategy' aspect of adventure racing comes in. Like the hare and the tortoise, just because you are fast and strong, does not mean you will do well.

Hesitant adventurers were lured out for a morning of gloriously dirty, off-road fun. Starting at 06h00, teams left the school and ran along the boundary fence, across the canal to the first checkpoint. Shooting at cans with a ‘kettie’, teams could proceed to the next challenge if they toppled two.

Teams were required to check in between discipline transitions, where they had their passports checked by the event organisers. This kept track of the teams’ whereabouts – a necessary safety factor - and provided navigation points and places they had to locate.

A run around the Uplands dam and swim across it followed. They then had to carry a pole and equipment for further construction at the College. This was followed by a relay swim with a difference: each team member had to collect a weight at the bottom of the pool, entitling the team to a wooden block. Then the teams set off to collect bikes for a trip to Ben’s Den. The trip was tricky, especially the river crossing, where bikes were put onto rafts and teams had to swim their rafts across. More wooden blocks were collected and teams had to check in along the way, until their return to the College.

Teams had to be clever. Some often got lost through inexperience or bad decisions and some discovered that short cuts were not always what they appeared to be. Adventure racing is about teamwork, not individual achievement. Teams had to complete the entire race together.

The winning team was that of Ian Weir, Dylan Park, Keith Trytsman and Emily Clark. In second place were Joshua Snyman, Shaun Emerick, Jenaed Brodell and Jonathan Myburgh.