Expedition Africa Report, by Matt Cymanski

Lead-In

One day at work last fall, I got a text from Alyssa - “What do you think about racing Expedition Africa next year with Brent and Abby?” I said I’d think about it, but once I watched the promo video, I knew I couldn’t pass this one up. We had a Zoom call a few weeks later, where A & B explained how unfit they would be, due to their six months of travel pre-race and I think tried to talk me out of it, but somehow this didn’t really phase me. I also kind of met Garrison for the first time. We’d had some conversations before, but nothing approaching how well we’d get to know each other over the course of an expedition race. They were leaving to begin their trip a few days later, so they hastily packed their bikes and duffels to leave in their garage in Philadelphia to be pick up by Garrison and me at a later date to transport to Africa. For some reason, carting two sets of expedition racing gear around the world with them wasn’t very appealing.

To start preparing for a race through the desert, I proceeded to ski as much as possible over the winter. At least there were quite a few days where I was carrying a big pack. Once ski season wrapped up, Alyssa had me carrying a pack with a bunch of sand bags in it on most of my runs, hikes, and bikes leading up to the race. Not only did this help me mentally prepare for all the sand we would encounter during this race, but I think the combination of slowing down a bit due to the extra weight, getting the pack-carrying muscles in shape, and making the legs strong was a great combo to prepare for this race, and I think I would definitely do something similar to prepare for a future expedition race. It really sucks at first, but eventually it just becomes a thing you do. But I’m definitely looking forward to doing some faster running with less weight in the coming months.​

Packing

Being a first-time expedition racer, packing and planning was a bit tricky for me. Garrison, Abby, and Brent all came up with their own projections for how long each leg would take us, and they all came in within a few hours of each other in total, so that helped me figure out how many calories to bring. They all warned me that I wouldn’t want to eat any of the food I brought by the end, which, while given with the best of intentions, isn’t very practical advice, but did prove to be true. The principles I used for packing food were: 250-300 cal/hr packed for each leg, a variety of foods both within and between legs, and transition from more “race” fuel to real food as the race went on.  I also packed plenty of food to eat during transitions, mainly dehydrated camp meals or Ramen. Next time, I’ll try to add more variety, but I think overall this strategy worked well. 
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We also had seemingly endless discussions about sleep strategy. We didn’t settle on a specific plan, but I think this background was really important for making sleep decisions on course, since we had sort of a common starting point. 

I also packed mainly new sets of clothes for almost each leg. Since there were only eight legs in this race, this was achievable. Having a little less would have been fine, but I’d still want a new chamois for each bike leg, and new socks. Since this race was in the desert, t-shirts and shorts could last a while and dried quickly.

I started to get a sense of how dialed Garrison was during the packing phase. Everything was ready to go at a moment’s notice. Need to take care of your mouth? There's a bag for that. Need to poop? There’s a bag for that. Need to rappel? There’s a tuna can size bag for that. My lips still got totally wrecked, but Garrison shared his chapstick with me the whole race and saved me from a much worse fate.
Things I didn’t pack that my teammates started pulling out during the race included - toothbrush/mouth cleaning kit, lots of lube - I brought some, but nowhere near enough, especially if chafing had been a problem - and chapstick!

Travel/Pre-Race

Alyssa dropped me off at the Boston airport with 2 bike boxes, 2 duffle bags, and my carry on luggage. Dealing with all this baggage went much smoother than expected, and a couple days later I showed up at the airport in Windhoek, Namibia, where Brent was waiting to greet me. He’d had a fun night taking Simon to the ER at 3 AM, so we were both a little low on energy. We made the drive back to Arrebush, where Abby, Garrison, Zoe, and Simon were waiting. This was Thursday, T-3 days to race start. We did a bit of gear organization, so Abby could wrap her head around what she’d put in her duffle bag six months ago, and made a trip down the road to the mall. The mall in Windhoek was a surprising western-style mall that seemed to be very much still a popular destination. The next few days were filled with a few more trips to the mall, several hours of packing, organizing and repacking bins, bike boxes and paddle bags, trying to avoid getting hit by cars driving on the left side of the road, a trip to Manny’s Bike Shop for some quick brake service - which was nicer than any of the shops around home - some jogs around town, and some feet-up time.

Friday night we were treated to a welcome ceremony and course preview, that was done in only the way Heidi and Stephan can. Stephan gave us a light hearted race overview, but warned that we should all rest during the heat of the day from 1-4 PM and race through the night. At some point it was confirmed we wouldn’t find water anywhere on the course. The long trek and bike would have some CPs with water provided by the race, but otherwise we had to carry all the water we needed from each TA. We weren’t sure how to interpret the warning about racing during the heat of the day, but we certainly kept that in mind as we moved through the course. We also learned that they referred to one road as “the tar road,” which was an omen of the road conditions we would face on the bike.

Early Saturday morning was gear check and drop off, and then we had the afternoon to relax a little bit before a 4 AM bus to the start the next morning. We showed up at the bus in the morning, and realized between the four of us we had slept about a collective five hours the night before. We may have gotten a few more hours on the long bus ride to Walvis Bay, but it certainly wasn’t an ideal way to start a six-day race. When we arrived, we were able to get our gear set up on the boats, Brent and Abby said a tearful farewell to the kids, and we walked down to the pier with our American flag for the race start. 

​Rather than going through each stage in detail, I’ll note some highlights, low lights, memorable moments, and sleep for the eight stages.

Stage 1

Stage 1 was a paddle tour of Walvis Bay, with a surf exit just north of the bay. 
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Highlights were:

• A nice 2k portage in the classic Rootstock style. Just when I was settling in, thinking the next section of paddle was going to be straightforward, Brent suggested a portage across the mud flats, which came out about neutral on time. I did get to make myself useful by carrying half the boats the whole way.
• Flamingo and seal colonies. There were hundreds of each, and we paddled right through all the seals playing in the water on the way to CP2. Very cool.

Lowlight:

• On the way to the last CP, we spotted the attack point pretty far out. This was our first experience with a change in perspective here. For the next thirty minutes as we paddled toward it, it seemed to keep getting smaller and smaller, even though we were making forward progress.

Comic Relief:

• Getting out of the paddle, there was a bit of surf. Brent and I got dumped immediately, and Garrison came out of his boat not long after. Abby managed to stay in the boat all the way to shore. I had my rain pants on, and they had a small crotch rip at the start. The surf got in there, and both seams ripped down past the knees. There was so much pressure from my now parachute pants I thought I was going to have to take my pants off to get out. Needless to say, these pants aren’t making the trip home.

Stage 2

We headed back south down the beach for a few kilometers, passing what would turn out to be the last real civilization we would see for a long while. Then we headed left into the dunes for sunset.
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Highlights:

• The dunes were spectacular, especially at sunset. It’s hard to describe the dunes properly but we enjoyed our time here, and the team was in high spirits.

Stage 3

Our bike boxes were waiting at T2, a remote location in the middle of the desert (clue was Tree in Desert, I believe). We put our bikes together and got moving fairly quickly. We had a long road march before heading into some single track along the Swakop River that we would come to know well. 
Highlights: 

• Some great desert single track that was fun and flowy. We were riding uphill, and it would have bene even more fun going down.
  
• Our first experience off-roading through the desert, and starting to get familiar with the sand. There were so many different sand qualities, ranging from loose beach sand to almost cement. As the race went on, we were able to read it better and find better lines.
  
• The moonrise midway through the bike was incredible. It was distorted into a distinct oval as it came up over the desert.
  

Lowlights:

• We spent about an hour looking for CP11, which was hiding behind a rock pile. We weren’t the only team to struggle, but just about the last to find it.
  
• A bit of a death march over to TA3. It was late in the night at that point, and Brent especially was struggling. If I’m being honest, I got a little worried about how our race was going to go at this point. 
  

Stage 4

Stage 4 was the queen stage, trekking through the incredible moonscape of the Swakop River canyon. 
Highlights: 

• Navving mostly by moonlight for the first several hours and totally nailing it. As soon as the sun came up, we made our first bobble. 
  
• We came out of the canyon midway through and trekked about five kilometers across the open desert in the middle of the day, and the wind was whipping. I felt like we were Fremen making their way across the desert of Arrakis.
  
• A leopard sighting a couple kilometers from the TA! I spotted the eyes first, but we could definitely see the whole cat hanging out in a tree/bush about 10 m away from us.
  

Lowlights:

• We really messed up the second to last CP. I think it was a classic mistake of seeing something that looked like a great CP location, thinking it must be there, and getting pulled in the wrong direction.
  
• All the bees in the desert had congregated near the water supply at Camp C.
  
• Perhaps my lowest moment of the race was after we had decided on the way into Camp C that over the next 24 hrs we were just going to trek 20k back to TA, then bike the 20k to Camp C, and wait for the heat of the day to be over. I wasn’t a fan of basically not giving ourselves any chance of success. Luckily after resting on it, we all collectively decided we didn’t like that idea much and kept pushing on.
  

Comic Relief:

• Brent started falling apart on the 10k trek back to camp and Other Brent joined us. We took at least one fifteen-minute cat nap here. The lowest low was when we asked him if he needed to stop, and he just collapsed into the sand. After a few minutes, we discuss amongst ourselves that we should let him sleep, and he proceeds to let us know from the dead that he’s not actually sleeping. He walks the rest of the way back to TA with a bunch of sand stuck to the side of his head.
  

Sleep:
We tried to heed Stephan’s warnings, and had arrived at Camp C, which was about 30k into the 50k leg around 1:30. We thought we’d get three hrs of sleep here before finishing up. After ninety or so minutes of not sleeping and getting stung by bees, we decided to get out of there, having felt like we wasted some time. 
After arriving back at TA3, we went to a guest house they had available for the racers, took showers, and slept for six hours in beds. We all woke up feeling great, with the veterans saying that was the best sleep they’d ever gotten in an expedition race.

Stage 5

This was a massive 160k bike leg from TA3 to Spitzkoppe. There was water at Camp C, about 20k in, and Camp D, about 80k in. The 60k between camps was “no mans land” and was extremely remote. In hindsight I’m not sure this area was more remote from our perspective than a lot of the rest of the course, but probably furthest from the nearest tar road or settlement. 

Highlights:

• We decided to cut some corners by just riding our bikes through the desert. This was a ton of fun, and seemed to save us quite a bit of time. It was probably easier riding than the actual roads
  
• Brent came up with a strategy to take a rest whenever we got some shade from a cloud. This simple strategy was actually pretty effective.
  
• While not a highlight for the whole team, getting to see Brent deal with Other Abby emerging on night 3 and contrasting that to Abby dealing with Other Brent the night before was very insightful. 
  
• Laying down in the desert for some quick rest breaks with the Milky Way overhead in all it’s glory. After night one, we had the best star gazing I’ve ever seen before moonrise each night.
  
• Rolling into Camp D, we were having a discussion on the chances another team would be there. When we arrived, there were actually four or five teams, all looking like they were extras on the walking dead. We were feeling good at this point, all things considered.
  

Lowlights:

• The last quarter of the ride was not fun, especially for Abby, who was being haunted by some persistent sleep monsters. I think the lack of bike training probably played a big role in these as well.
  
• Washboard. All of the washboard. Sometimes, there was a “road,” which was made by driving a road grader through the desert that had really bad washboard. So people started just driving in the desert next to the road. But then that got severely washboarded as well, so they started a third lane, which was also washboarded. This resulted in roads that were eighty feet wide, totally covered in washboard. A lot of times, riding in the desert sand was preferable, but conditions there were highly variable. In Brent’s pre-race blog, he made a reference to Doc Brown’s famous quip, “Where we’re going we don’t need roads!” In hindsight, this may have been more prescient than he thought.
  
• The whole leg was a false flat uphill, which combined with the washboard and headwind, could make for some really slow going. One 12k stretch with about 100m of gain took 1:45 to get through.
  
• In the second half, we went through a ton of washes. While the water was long gone, the sand there was really soft, and often required walking through.
  

Comic Relief:

• At one point Brent, Mike, and I were having a discussion about how we should have packed our stilsuits. Abby came in midway through and spent a while convinced she had missed an important discussion.
  

Sleep:
We had to take a few fifteen-minute cat naps to get through this bike. We rolled into TA4 a few hours before sunrise, and decided to get some sleep in a shed with a tractor in it. We had intended to get three hrs, but after about an hour and a half, we were awoken by a couple guys looking to get their tractor out and start work for the day. They were very kind about it, but in hindsight, it was pretty funny. After this incident, we just decided to get up and get moving.

Stage 6

Spitzkoppe! Spitzkoppe was a spectacular trek, and an extremely well laid out leg. We were surprised at how sporty the second half of the loop was. There was some scrambling and some ropes even before the official abseil. 
Highlights: 

• I survived my first abseil experience. It wasn’t an easy one, and I had a brief moment when my left hand got stuck under the rope going down an overhang, but all was good in the end. 
  
• Bushman's Paradise was a very cool place - you came up over a ridge into a big bowl, and were surrounded by high rock on all sides. There were many different plants in here we didn’t see anywhere else, and the view was spectacular in all directions.
  
• The whole race we felt was very well laid out, but this one especially was well thought out and flowed really well. While we didn’t encounter a ton of navigational challenge in this race, the course layout was well done and felt like almost every leg had its own identity, with the exception of maybe Leg 5 and Leg 7. There was only one out and back checkpoint of more than fifty meters in the whole race. 
  
• The second half of the loop was a little sporty, which was a fun change of pace from the mostly straightforward hiking we’d been doing up to that point.
  

Lowlights:

• We ran out of food and water at the end of this leg, and had to ration for the last couple of hours. In the end it wasn’t a major issue, but was the first time we really had to ration water.
  

Sleep: 
We finished this stage in the late afternoon, and decided to try to sleep for a few hours. After about an hour, we got moving since not everyone was sleeping. While not perfect, this got us out of camp right after sunset and gave us enough juice to push into the night for a few hours. 

Stage 7

Another big bike from Spitzkoppe/TA4 back to TA3. The good news was this would be mostly overnight, so there wasn’t much wind, road surfaces were significantly improved, and it was pretty much all downhill.

Highlights:

• There was almost no washboard for the first 20k or so, which was amazing. 
• We had two one-hour ditch sleeps overnight. The first one especially, I woke up shivering, but generally sleeping in the sand was pretty great. I think with a proper ground pad I could have spent the whole night there
• Around 40k, we suddenly rode into some dense fog that reduced visibility to 10-20 ft, and everything was quickly soaked. This was the first moisture we’d seen on course outside of the TA3 oasis and race provided water since we’d left the ocean.

Lowlights:

• Everyone was suffering with saddle pain, by the second half especially. I have no idea how Brent and Abby made it so far with their lack of bike training and riding hardtails. I think Abby rode 80% of the second half standing up.

Comic Relief:

• Day 4 Matt showed up after the gas station stop. I don’t know if any of us remember the details, but I think I was making fun of Garrison for eating 2,000 calories, including a liter of juice, and then complaining about his stomach, and we were all giggling about it. Or could have been Brent and me arguing about whether the hamburger toasty from the station was delicious or disgusting.
• At some point I started to realize that all my teammates started looking slightly like caricatures of themselves. I think in part due to everyone looking tired and puffy, and in part due to my sleep deprived brain being unable to interpret faces correctly.

Stage 8

Stage 8 started through the moonscape, but to the west this time, then out onto the mouth of the Swakop, and finally we got on the camels for a few kilometers before the final ceremonial push to the finish.
Highlights:

• Nailing the nav shortcut to CP46. It was a bit of a risk, but it was a spectacular traverse and we ended up right on top of the point. This seemed like it saved us about thirty minutes.
• Following some leopard or other big cat prints in the wash for a while. It was suggested it was a leopard, but there were two sets and leopards are usually solo, so hard to say.
• The camel ride. While this was by far the most painful part of the race for me, riding a camel isn’t something you get to do every day.
• The finish! Even though we were trying to keep food and water going, I think the wheels started coming off for all of us the last 10k or so. The smell of the barn is real. 

Comic Relief:

• When we got off the camels, Brent said since there were no punches, I could ceremonially navigate us to the final CP and the finish. This was the point in the race when I was suffering the most by far, and I could barely walk. I think the combination of stiffening up on the camel and the body starting to fall apart knowing that the end was in sight was a deadly combination. Incidentally, Brent had needed to get off his camel midway through since it wasn’t walking right, so I figured while he had been walking alongside the camel train, he’d been looking at the maps. The final nav wasn’t hard, but I really didn’t want to get us lost at that point in the race!
• During troubleshooting of Brent’s camel’s (Israel) issues, Garrison’s lead camel was untied from the train. He promptly headed straight for a snack about 10 m away, but there was a brief moment of panic as they headed off alone into the night.

Post-Race

I’m not typically one to reflect on race experiences too much, but Brent and Abby seem to be big on this, so I was inspired to do some more thinking. Some takeaways I had were:

This being my first expedition race, I didn’t quite know what to expect. Would I like it? How would I hold up to sleep deprivation? Would I get bored? Could I keep eating? But I loved every minute of it. I learned many lessons, including the importance of mouth care, what kind of shareable food you should bring, and how rewarding it can be to operate closely as a team for a week.

I was incredibly impressed by how well Brent and Abby did, given their training status. I think this goes to show the power of “old man strength” as well as the fact that they are both naturally gifted athletes, whether they know it or not. I know if I trained as much as they did for this race, I may not have made it through the paddle. They both ran into the lowest lows on the team, but were able to push through, and both occurred in the first part of the race, and they were able to put that behind them and revitalize themselves for the last few legs.

The team aspect of adventure racing is really special. Working closely with a team, especially in an athletic environment is not something you get to experience much as an adult, and I think the more you lean into it, the more successful the team can be. With expedition racing, this is turned up several notches. You’re spending days in a row together non-stop, making tough decisions, getting tired, sleeping curled up in a ditch, and generally under stress. Also not something you get to experience much as an adult. It can either be an amazing bonding experience, or I think a recipe for disaster. For this group, it was an amazing bonding experience. Going in, I knew the team enough to know I’d like them well enough, but was a little bit nervous about spending five or six straight days with them. In the end it was kind of like going to summer camp as a kid. At the beginning you might be a bit nervous, but come out the other side as a squad, not wanting to go back to the real world. 

​All three of the others were really good about sharing their experience and gear I didn’t think to pack. Brent and I worked really well together on the maps, and I think we got the most out of the team we had, which at the end of the day is one of the reasons we race.

This led me to wonder what individual characteristics made us work well together as a team for future team building success. Other than just racing with the same four again, what should we consider in the future when putting together a team? There are characteristics we all had, like toughness, resilience, problem solving, and good humor that are important for any adventure racer. Then there are of course things like having a navigator that are obvious considerations for team composition. But what traits did we have that complimented each other? I’m not sure there’s an answer that Day 8 Matt can provide, but it’s certainly something worth reflecting on.