RMB Ultra Trail Cape Town: A Trail Running Adventure
The past weekend saw the running of the RMB Ultra Trail Cape Town, a premium trail event in Cape Town. As a world class trail event, it attracted a host of athletes from around South Africa and a large contingent of foreign elite and non elite athletes.
There were several distances to participate in, from the shortest being a 23 km trail to the flagship event, the 100 mile event.
Besides the choice of distances, the class athletes and the spectacular race village setting at The Gardens Rugby Club, you cannot beat Cape Town for its spectacular beauty, tough trails, challenging weather conditions and uniqueness. In short one of the best trail venues in the world! (in my opinion)
Christine Walsh from the Remuneration Team at RMB, took on the 23 km trail on Friday morning. Running on the road, 23 km is not so far. However, running it on a trail is far, and running it on TableMountain is very far and hard.
The cut off time for the 23 km was 6.5 hours, which in itself tells a story, add an elevation profile of 1144m+ and you have yourself a bit of a challenge on your hands.
Out of the 436 finishers, there were 119 withdrawals. That is a large amount for a smaller trail and again emphasises how tough that trail really is.
So, a very nervous Christine stood at the start line on Friday morning, probably wondering what she got herself involved in. Her first goal was to get to the aid station at UCT before the cut off time, then get up over Blockhouse climb and finish at the Rugby Stadium before the final cut off.
The trail starts at the Constantia Sports Complex and heads out towards the greenbelts of Constantia, easy peasy, so you think. Then you start climbing through the technical sections of Newlands Forrest with a huge drop down to the upper campus of UCT.
Ok, so 10 km left, that can’t be too hard, right? Wrong! Now its time to dig deep and find your inner strength, as you approach the climb to Blockhouse hill. The path is eroded and steep and never seems to end. Once up you traverse the lower slopes of Devils Peak, you take the plunge down to Dead Man’s Tree (a badly eroded and rocky jeep track), cross which seems like 100 wooden bridges, jump onto the tar roar and head towards the Rugby stadium. At last you see a huge RMB banner that shows you the way up to the finish.
With a huge smile on her face and nearly bouncing with joy, Christine crossed the finish line in a time of 5h50min. A great effort and a fantastic time!
One of the best moments for a running coach is to see an athlete that has worked really hard achieve their running goal, for me it was a double as not only do I coach Christine, but I also am her partner.
I am not an employee of RMB, but frequently get mentioned as an extended family member of RMB!
I won’t bore you too much telling you about the inaugural RMB UTCT 100 mile event that I completed. Words like hard, technical, gusty winds, cliffs, mist, rocks, boulders, beach running, steep descents and really steep climbs come to mind.
As the saying goes, ‘This was not my first Rodeo’ but the RMB UTCT 100 mile must be the toughest 100 mile event I have ever run. The miler course took us from Gardens Rugby Club to Signal Hill, Kloof Corner, Platteklip Gorge, twice over Chapmans Peak, Hout Bay, Simons Town (which was the turnaround point), back to Noordhoek, Chapmans Peak (again), Constantia and UCT and of course the famous Blockhouse climb!
The last 11km are so tough it took me 3 hours to complete the distance.
Finish time was 33h18 min and the total elevation was 8500m+.
Looking back at the event, you realize how incredibly privileged we are to be able to run in such a beautiful setting such as Table Mountain Nature reserve. The magnificent flora is a feast for the eye and there is a delight around every corner, it nearly becomes overwhelming.
At this point I must congratulate RMB for stepping up to the plate as the headline sponsor for UTCT, and thus helping to promote a sport that is not only challenging but life changing.
In addition, I must also congratulate all the RMB employees that completed their event, namely Burger van der Merwe (100 km in 17h23m), Brett Boardman (100 km in 17h35m), Brad Carter (55 km in 8h25m), Anushka Wohlberg (55 km in 10h39m), Nicholas Cowen (23 km in 2h46m), Julian Grieve (23 km in 2h56m), Keiron Frost (23 km in 3h13m), Quinton Claassen (23 km in 3h28m), Tarryn Lyall (23 km in 3h49m), Richard Isaacs (23 km in 3h53m), Phakamile Mainganya (23 km in 4h19m), Zamile Njoko (23 km in 4h23m).
The motto of this article is that nothing is impossible, if you can imagine it, you can do it!
I challenge all the staff of RMB to enter UTCT 2023, get training and achieve trail greatness!
Oliver Ruhl
Science Based Run Coaching
