Forty-five kilometres of pristine mountain. Friendly support teams. Lots of home-brewed beer at the finish. Last year I missed the the Brauhaus Am Damm race, and consequently had to listen to everyone else singing their praises to this 45 km epic trail run. I was determined not to miss it again, so I started training early - a full four weeks before the race! As expected it was not quite enough training, but enough for me to enjoy the event, which took place on 13 October 2012. The route was simple. You start at the foot of Breedt's Nek Pass, run to the top, run along the top ridge of the Magaliesberg, down a ridge at Olifantsnek, around the Olifantsnek Dam, and back to Brauhaus Brewery. This sounds and is indeed simple on a clear sunny day! But on race day morning, with mist so thick that you could only see 10 to 20 m in front of you, it proved to be not as simple. We started early, 4 a.m. early! The organisers transported us to the starting point at the Brauhaus Brewery farm style, in an open cattle truck with hay bales for seats. This was great fun and some of us even managed to get some sleep on the way. At the turn off to Breedt's Nek Pass we jumped off, stamping our feet to warm up a bit. With our headlamps on, and keeping to the farm theme, a shotgun sounded the start of the race. While the big boys dashed off, the rest of the runners set off at a more sedate pace, with the walkers bringing up the rear.
2 • DO IT NOW DIGITAL | October 2012_#10
My number one rule at these types of races is: walk uphills and run the flats and downhills. There are a few amendments to this rule, of course, like run uphill if it is a nice, easy jeep track at the start of a race, and don't run flats and downhills if you are going to break your neck, arm, leg or twist your ankle, 'coz then you're buggered. With this in mind, I ran to the top of Breedt's Nek and turned west towards Olifantsnek just as dawn was breaking. The weather was overcast and misty, but there was a good jeep track so we didn't expect any navigational difficulties to arise too soon. Alas, a few hundred metres later we made our first 'boo boo'; we took a wrong turn and ended up going down a valley from where we had come. Luckily we realised our error before it was too late and were able to bundu bash over a few valleys and hills to get back to the correct track. From this point onwards it was an easy matter of just following the Magaliesberg ridge, or so we were told. However, it's not so easy when you can't see very far in front of you. The biggest problem when running in the mist is how quickly your internal compass turns 180 degrees! At one stage we had a 'directional dispute', and actually almost convinced ourselves that the compass was wrong! Thankfully, we weren't the only ones getting lost, thus evening out the playing field. One lady (notice how I name no