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Another major problem that we were encountering was that of the terrain which basically ranged from boulders strewn across the river bed, thick river sand and occasionally when lucky a track across the larger corners of the river. Nevertheless we pushed on and still had a realistic chance with 18km to go and 2hrs left to cover it in. The time lost on the remaining crossings however soon made us realise that we were going to fall short of the record. With 14km left to go, we decided to settle into a comfortable pace as there was nothing left to do other than simply finish. As darkness began to fall, we once again took out our torches for
the final stretch home. This obviously slowed us down to a walking
After words of congratulations and hugs alround, some finally gave us the "bad news" - the record was 11hrs 42min and not 10hrs 42min as we had thought. I say "bad news" in that had we known with 18km to go that we actually had 3hrs as opposed to 2hrs left to finish, we would not have slowed down at the end and would probably have made the time. That however, is hindsight and cannot be changed. When all is said and done, we took 12hrs 29min to cover the 84km (5 day) hiking trail. We lost a total of 2hrs 24min on river crossings (the actual time taken in taking shoes off, crossing the river, drying feet and putting shoes on again), and only missed the record by 47minutes. It was so close, but oh so far (in more ways than one) - we will however be back, as in our hearts we know that the record was well within our grasp. This article by Time-to-Run contributor Russell Paschke
 Time-to-Run Namibia |
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Africans in 1990. Hereunder is a summary of the attempt as
told by them.
The
next target time was that of 8hrs at the four finger rock landmark
and we reached that in 8hrs 10min. So far - so good, but what was
concerning us was the time that we were constantly losing due to
river crossings. The further down the river you go, the more crossings
you have as the gorge widens and the bends get bigger. This meant
that we were losing more and more time later in the day after having
been ahead of schedule for the first two thirds of the run. 
pace
for the final 6km which took us an hour to cover. The risk of injury
from a twisted ankle made running a non viable option in the darkness
at this stage as we knew we were no longer able to break the record.
As we rounded the last bend in the river we heard a loud cheer as
our supporters saw our lights in the distance. This was a huge boost
and lifted our spirits for the last 500m home. |
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