The last weekend of April 2018 was a special occasion in more ways than one.
With public holidays on the Friday and the following Tuesday, only one day’s leave was required to have a guilt-free five-day break.
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For dedicated obstacle course racers and supporters, Afriski and BattleRush joined forces to create The Air Up There – Africa’s highest altitude obstacle race.
The Maluti Mountains of Lesotho supplied the 3 222m of altitude, while the competitors brought along plenty of positive attitude.
Looking up from the mountain bowl in which the Afriski Mountain Resort is situated, competitors could see not just the formidable angle of the ski slope, but also the yellow-painted obstacles dotted about the mountainside, promising a real challenge – and some genuine entertainment.
The Air Up There event began on the Friday afternoon with the now-traditional uphill sprint. With 170m of vertical gain in 900m of running for a 20 percent gradient, this was lung-busting mountain madness at its best.
The comments of ‘How hard can it be?’ faded into a competitive silence as the runners gazed up the hillside, along the line of the ski-lift pylons and past the wall obstacle placed midway.
The sprint was won by Armin Botha in a time of 00:07:34, with Bradley Claase 43 seconds behind him. First lady across the line was Talitha Scholtz in 00:11:03, with Zelda Schultz hot on her heels in 00:11:19.
Race director Marco Caromba gave the race briefing in the resort’s Sky Restaurant – the highest in Africa – that evening, describing the obstacles that racers would face on the 15km and 8km courses the following morning. He described each obstacle with great relish, and his passion for the event further inspired everyone present.
Saturday dawned clear and fresh, with a stiff mountain breeze fluttering the blue flags marking the course. The obstacles began with crawling under barbed wire and throwing spears through tyres, and included imaginative – and challenging – climbs, jumps and clambers. Perhaps the two most daunting were the swim through a frigid lake, and the 2.5km uphill stretch carrying a bag of firewood.
Having to hoist a sack of timber halfway up a mountain certainly made everyone even more appreciative of the warmth of the Sky Restaurant on their return, while there was much humour (and more than a little Schadenfreude) to be had watching fellow racers who had failed an obstacle being made put through their paces in the adjacent ‘burpee zone’.
Completing a kids’ jigsaw puzzle is much more challenging at altitude – this was the final test before a headlong sprint back down the ski-slope to the finish line.
Armin Botha was again triumphant in the 15km event, with Bradley Claase and Willem Erasmus joining him on the podium. Talitha Scholtz was the women’s 15km champion, with Mandy Landsberg and Kristy Rault also making the top three.
The 8km men’s race was won by Brandon Hulley from Shannon Whitehead and Janus de Klerk, while Sammy Nel held off Karen Denny and Michelle Van Wyk to win the women’s short course event.
Lesotho’s towering Maluti Mountains continued to echo to determined grunts and victorious yells on the Saturday afternoon with a repeat of the hill sprint, while the Sunday morning schedule included a 1.1km obstacle sprint (won by Thomas van Tonder and Cindy Wills) before the ultimate event, the team relay race.
The ingenuity of the obstacles was matched only by the creativity of the team names, and after a hard-fought contest, Team Be-Nike (Armin Botha, Willem Erasmus and Thomas Von Tonder) found themselves victorious once again, with AfriFast, Team OCT 1 and Eastern Block Comrades not far behind.
Competitors who completed all The Air Up There events could combine their finishers’ medals to create a working gearbox, a fitting testament to how well engineered this obstacle course race had been by AfriSki and Battle Rush, and how much of a machine each man and woman needed to be to overcome it.
We are super stoked at how well the weekend ran. From our first event in 2017, our aim was to increase the difficulty of AUT and to expose the athletes to beautiful views and terrain of Lesotho and Afriski. From all the responses we have received we achieved our goal this year. Look out for a bigger AUT2019 – said Marco.
At 3 222m, the only thing missing from The Air Up There was air. Thrills, spills, camaraderie and warm Lesotho hospitality were all readily available.
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