Adventure Quest Africa

When the going gets tough ...

David Ogden - Team Manager of \'International Adventurers\' / 30.07.2002

We arrived outside Cradock and catnapped in the support vehicle waiting for the team. They arrived at 04.26 in 12th place and slept in their emergency shelter, emerging in the cool of the morning while being filmed by the camera crew. Jody at one stage burst from the shelter fighting for breath. I wasn’t allowed to assist her, but Kristel soon came to her aid as her cold/flue was getting worse and she was finding it difficult to breathe.

We left the team to make our way to Transition 3, a picnic area alongside the road. This was going to be a wet transition so we set up under the shelter of a tree and opened the awning attached to the Defender’s roof-rack to provide some protection. The team boxes and chairs were laid out and Julia started heating water for hot drinks. The team walked in at 10.45 and after a quick change and a hot meal set off on the long ride to Kommando Ridge nature reserve.

Once again we broke camp and set off down the track to leapfrog the team. We passed them just as the song “ I want to ride my bicycle� was playing on the radio, and continued on to set up a new camp by the lake in the nature reserve. This was to be our base for the next two transitions, the first a 25K trek around the dam including a 1Km swim, then back on mountain bikes for a mainly uphill 40Km ride.

The sun came out and the team seemed to be taking a long time for this leg. We had a report that they were seen sunbathing beside the road, perhaps drying out their clothes. They eventually arrived having dropped to 17th at 17.30, and Jody was suffering. We consulted the medics who thought she might be developing bronchial pneumonia. She didn’t want to let the team down so the decision was made to rest overnight and after eating she was prescribed some medicine to help her sleep.