Kalahari Augrabies Extreme Marathon

Snakes And Scorpions – But The Kalahari Heat Is Scarier

Jackie Windh / 26.10.2015

This will be a quick report… another very tough day. The heat is relentless. There are five DNFs that I know of today, and one DNS – and I don’t have current info from organizers, so there may be more racers out of the event too.

Edward Chapman has just arrived in camp, to a big round of applause. He is amazing – a big older guy from the UK, back here for his ninth year. He was one of the last ones in yesterday, and today’s start was staggered in four waves, with yesterday’s slowest finishers starting first, at 6:30am. Dave and I were I the second wave at 7am. Edward persevered to arrive here after spending 11 grueling hours on the route.

We started by descending a beautiful canyon – quite technical compared to most of what we have done, which has been mostly on vehicle tracks – over bare granitic rock and through very soft fine sand down to the orange river. We were informed this morning that, due to the extreme heat, all racers would be checked by the doctor at CP2. If they were deemed not to be fit to go on, they would be given the option of a short course or withdrawing.

Problem was… it was nice and cool (relatively) and overcast for much of the morning. Once we got away from the river, we were on easy vehicle tracks through the vineyard (yes, they grow grapes here in the valley where they can irrigate). Only two ended up being short-coursed – and then, just as we left the gravel track to go up another hot dusty canyon with no breeze, the sky cleared and the sun hit us full force.

So I, like many, have had a very tough day, and am not going to write much more now. It was definitely slow going for the second half of the route for many of us – the slower you are, the more of the hot sun you experience. There were definite heat issues going on, and it was on this section that several racers were forced to withdraw.

I need to go eat now. Tomorrow is 5 k longer – a total of 40k, hopefully the middle part of it in higher country where there is wind (which is very cooling when you are sweating this much!) I will see if I am up to writing a report tomorrow night or not… and then the next day is the 80k stage, which I can’t even bear to think about right now. But we have a rest day after that one – so if you don’t hear from me tomorrow, I’ll write the two reports on the following rest day.

Please wish us all luck. Many of the racers here have done this race multiple times, and they have never seen heat like this.

Breaking news – I just received race results. Yesterday’s winners Nathan Montague ad Mahmut Yavuz came in tied in 2:06:12, with Martin Kalwenya just 3 seconds behind them. Must have been an exciting finish! Today Nathan kept the lead, with Hylton Dunn taking second (both stage and overall) and Mahmut slipping down to third. Martin came fourth, but I have heard he is not running tomorrow – I am not sure why.

Top female is Jennifer Bradley, ahead of Altie Clark who was first in yesterday’s stage. We are now down to 56 of the 70 who started – and these were the two easy days. Like I said, wish us all luck.

­