Kalahari Augrabies Extreme Marathon

UK’s Nathan Montague Finishes Strongly To Take the Win

Jackie Windh / 02.11.2015

It’s been a real treat to be able to watch Nathan Montague on the course. That’s one of the advantages of the staggered race starts KAEM employs: faster runners start later, so we all pass one another along the way.

Nathan has been strong every day. He has never done a race in the heat before (nothing beyond UK summer, he told me). He has done a few stage races of up to three days, but nothing longer. But he trained for the heat by setting up a treadmill in his daughters’ playroom with several radiant heaters in there. “I don’t know if it made any difference in my physical preparation,” he told me, “but it certainly prepared me mentally for the heat.”

Nathan’s main rival this year was 2014 KAEM champion Mahmut Yavez, of Turkey. The two shared the win on Stage 1 of the race, crossing the finish line together and hand in hand. 
On Day 2, however, Nathan gained nearly 13 minutes over Mahmud over the 35 km route. This stage, South African Hylton Dunn moved into the picture, finishing just minutes behind Nathan to move ahead of Mahmud in the overall rankings.

The three were hard at it on Day 3. Nathan and Mahmud dropped Hylton, and the two battled it out over the 40 km extremely hot stage. Nathan won it by just 38 seconds.
Stage 4 results didn’t count, as the race was cancelled at 2pm because of the heat. Since the entire field had staggered starting times, ranging anywhere from 6:30am to 1pm, some people had made it as far as CP3 and others barely to CP1. But there was no way of accounting for either distance covered or time spent on course: it was a null day.

Stage 5 became the unexpected night stage - suddenly departing at night, suddenly being stopped at CP1 for close to an hour, suddenly having the route lengthened mid-run from 33 km to nearly 50 km. Mahmud was still only 14 minutes behind Nathan overall - it was not impossible for him to recover that time. 

Nathan beat Mahmud into CP1. The unexpected stop here was especially hard on the fastest racers. They chilled easily, and their legs - which were just warming up, only 10 km in - became heavy. Mahmud told me later that he gave up here: he knew he would not get his legs back. Not enough to make 14 minutes on a man who was having a really good run.

So by the start of Stage 6, we all knew who the winner would be. The course was being shortened substantially, again because of the extreme temperatures, from 25 km to 11 km. (A longer route meant there would be the risk of having to cancel the stage midway yet again, due to heat). Nathan could pretty much stop for a beer along the way, and still take the overall win.

We started in just two waves that final morning - around two thirds of the field departing at 7:00 am, and the top third of the field at 7:30 am. The route was conservative, on dirt tracks and some paved road. Dave and I were feeling really good and hoped to run much of it, as long as blister pain wasn’t too bad.

As usual, we were in the earlier start. We started strong and we just stayed that way. Only six or so people were ahead of us, so we were running ahead of twenty or thirty people who had been running ahead of us all week and we maintained that the whole way. We passed alongside some pretty vineyards and along the river, the route very straightforward: the few junctions well marked with arrows.

Surprisingly, though, several people got lost! One guy we started with, who is a faster runner than us, finished half an hour behind us. We called him back as we saw him take one wrong turn, but he still got lost several times. Shows how draining the week had been, many runners unable to focus.

But Dave and I were feeling great. Feet weren’t too bad after all, and I was pleasantly surprised that we ran the whole thing. I figured Nathan would be doing close to 4-minute kilometres, so once we were just over an hour in I started looking over my shoulder for him. At 1:12 on our race clock - 42 minutes in for him - I saw him approaching and prepared my camera. As usual, he shouted a cheery greeting as he zipped by, greeting every runner he passed with a high-five. He finished the 11k route in 44:57.

Also putting out a great performance this week was the UK’s Jennifer Bradley, taking first female and 7th place overall.

It’s been an incredible and challenging week. It started very rough - a rude shock for all to start in 48C heat, and very sobering to see the serious and, in one case, life-threatening, health issues that the heat caused on the first day. Twenty per cent of the field DNF’d over the first two days (the “easy” days) - but, after that, I believe there were only two further withdrawals. Every single runner who set out on that extended night run made it in - even though several only made it home after sunrise.

Our total official distance travelled was only 160 km - plus the 22 km that didn’t count on Stage 4. Nowhere near the 250 km distance that was planned. This may not have been the longest Kalahari Augrabies Extreme Marathon route ever... but it certainly was the most extreme.­