Lizelle v/d Merwe took part in Swazi Xtreme in a novice team guided by experienced racer Stephan Muller. With 10 years of adventure racing behind him, there was no better person to lead Team Kinetic to victory. This is Lizelle's experience:
Xtreme is one word that summarises the whole event for me. Each leg was long, each leg was a battle, each leg was tough, each leg was wishing for transition, each leg was grace from above and each and every transition AMAZING. On the bike legs I wished for a hike, on the hiking legs I wished for a bike, on the paddling legs I just wanted to get out of the water and wished for transition. Against all this, I can definitely recall a smile, adrenaline and giggles on each and every leg.
I am still trying to make sense of all the legs, the flow of the race and when what happened. As a novice racer in the Swazi Xtreme race, I had no idea what to expect. Luckily for us, we had the most experienced AR racer in our team as navigator and knew from the start that we would be in good hands. I expected the worst as I could recall horror stories told by past Swazi Xtreme racers.
From the beginning we could feel and see that Xtreme is definitely the word that would summarise this event. Bike & hike distances were a mindset change for me as kilometres started to become irrelevant as every leg started to become a survival to get to the next transition. Every transition was a uplift for our team, as we had the best seconds in the whole wide world, thanks Heidi, Shauni and Oom Louis. Together with long distances, I had to fight the sleep monster on the third night. Falling asleep on my bike, was no pleasant experience, but definitely a wake-up call!
You only realise in what state you are when you look at your teammates, look in their faces and realise the funny things they are doing and saying. The words: “If you think you can’t go further, then you are only halfway” became such a reality for me during this race!
Highlights for me would definitely be the little pool of water we found on top of the mountain during a midday 'kloofing leg' in extremely hot weather. Stephan and I wet our clothes in the pool after almost dehydrating and felt so much better after this. Another thing was the school children gathered around us and looking at us as if we were aliens from another planet. Luckily the children were full of energy and pushed me up the hill with lots of giggles and enthusiasm. Then a swinging scary bridge was a good way to keep the adrenaline pumping on a 93km bike leg.
The rest of the race is a bit of a blur as I cannot recall what came after what. BUT who can forget the last leg, pushing bikes down a mountain and then on the other side up in an area where you wish you never find yourself again!!!
However, our team kept the 'fort' and slowly but surely we were putting the kilometres in the bag, and still waiting for the last, quick and easy 30km we were promised to the finish line. However a warm welcome and celebration was waiting at the finish line, as we were the first official team to arrive. AWESOME AWESOME AWESOME it felt to be at the end!! Although I only realised the WIN a little bit later.
And now, how do you explain to people what you went through? How can you ever look at life the same? How do you expect people to understand this? It has been a life experience and character building, which you can only share with teammates and people who went through the same suffering!!!!!!
Thanks for everyone involved in making this event my most memorable event ever. Thanks for all the hard work and time that went into the organising of such a big event. Thousands of thanks to the best teammates ever, thanks for pushing, dragging, carrying and helping me! Thanks Stephan for spot-on navigation and not making me go more miles. Thanks to Danie, wow where do you get your strength from! Thanks to my husband, who made sure I was fine the whole time and who prayed for us the whole time. To our seconds, never could we have done this without you guys, you knew exactly what we needed when. Thanks for making transitions quick and AWESOME. Thanks for serving us the way you guys did!
Lizelle van der Merwe, Team Kinetic
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