Over the long weekend of 28 to 30 April Grahamstown athletes Brian Bannatyne and Laura Forster from Albany Road Runners took part in the first presentation of the Merrell Xtreme 146km trail run.
Over the long weekend of 28 to 30 April Grahamstown athletes Brian Bannatyne and Laura Forster from Albany Road Runners took part in the first presentation of the Merrell Xtreme 146km trail run.
The event stretches from the shoreline at the East Pier in Port Alfred, to Nahoon Beach in East London in three stages, stopping overnight at Mpekweni and Kidd’s Beach. The group of 12 full-distance runners was supplemented by five “day trippers”, who each ran a stage or two.
The emphasis was on fun and finishing, rather than on racing and winning. With refreshment stations every 10-15 km, the runners made their way along kilometre after kilometre of the Eastern Cape’s famous unspoiled beaches while sampling delights of the local resorts.
The run served as an excellent opportunity for some early, long-distance sand training before the 7-day self-supported desert race, the Kalahari Augrabies Extreme Marathon, that Bannatyne and Forster have their sights set on doing in October.
Day one, covering 46km started literally with a bang at 7am in a violent thunderstorm with heavy rain and a fierce westerly wind. Forster arrived at the Mpekweni stop-over in 5 hours and 21 minutes with Brian following in 5:39.
Day two covered a 56km course. The group of slightly stiff but otherwise happy athletes set off towards Palm Springs Resort at Kidd’s Beach. Laura lead the women home in 8:01 and Brian arrived in 8:06.
On day three (44km), racing was laid aside and it was officially a pack run, starting with a 3km jog up the beach from Palm Springs back to the Beach House restaurant, where a full breakfast with coffee was served.
The runners made their way through the outskirts of East London near the harbour to the rowing club. Here a luxury catamaran waited to ferry the group down river. There was a short jog to the esplanade, before the group headed off together for the winding trails around Pinnacle Point and the finish at Nahoon Beach.
Bannatyne said: “We joined a group of strangers when we left Port Alfred on Friday morning with a long, hard run ahead of us, but by the time we finished in East London we had all become friends who had come through the thing together, and shared many hours on the run, and many stories in the evenings.”
Forster also thoroughly enjoyed the trail, remarking, “it was fun to use the first two days as hard training, but lovely to be able to relax and enjoy the third as a group”.
