Race 2 Rhodes

“We’ve made a safety call, we’ve withdrawn,” I said quietly over the phone to Nicky’s husband, Gerhard. Nicky cried openly as we hiked back to the Malekgolonyane Support Station. Dean and Peter were ashen, their disappointment written on their faces. I felt hollow.

- Andy Wesson

Dean Barclay, Nicky Booyens, Peter Purchase, and yours truly spent five days on the trail from Pietermaritzburg to Rhodes village. In that time, South Africa had reacted decisively to COVID-19. The afternoon of Saturday 21 March was a reality check. Lockdown was going to happen – and soon. With 360km behind us, 120km to go, 36 hours left on the clock – anyone would have fought the odds for a chance to finish, or let the clock run out and cut in the field.

Except we didn’t. We made a safety call. It was time to go home. The adventure was over. It was fortunate that we had friends in the area who had the ability to extract us. ‘In the area’ required a 12-hour round-trip drive for Paul and Kelly Freeth, arriving at 3 am on Sunday at the support station.

No precedent for failure

Nothing in life had prepared me for that moment. I cannot recall any situation where I have elected to quit or to voluntarily be removed from an environment. No appeasement offer sounds like anything but excuses for the DNF. But still, I believe we made the correct call.

By 6pm Saturday, after five and a half days of trekking and trotting, we had traversed 400km in total, 360 on the actual route, and estimated our sleep at under 10 hours. At that point 120km may have taken closer to 48 hours, and it appeared that we were not going to beat the clock, unless a miracle happened. We had run out of miracles.

After we left Malekgolonyane support station, we missed the trail down and to the left. We missed the next turn, and the next. Dusk settled quickly, and with it, a sense of panic.