The 1988 Wild Coast Trail – 25 year Retrospective Report – Part 3: In Too Deep

By Dean McCleland in Hiking 2 Comments

Refreshed & reinvigorated, we charged off after a breakfast comprising the full enchilada – eggs, bacon, sausage, tomato & toast. The resort had even managed to wash & iron our clothes overnight. The menacing clouds had converted themselves into friendly wispy innocuous candy floss fluff balls, cute & cuddly. First we had to pass the hut where we were supposed to have stopped the day before. That made the day’s hike slightly longer but being as fit as we were, not an undue burden.

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The 1988 Wild Coast Trail – 25 year Retrospective Report – Part 2: An ignominious start

By Dean McCleland in Hiking 2 Comments

Clear blue skies welcomed in a brand new day. A steady radiant sun hidden for the past 5 days greeted all & sundry with gay abandon as if it was a long lost friend. But first things first! I had talked both Kurt & Mike into doing a quick 21km run before breakfast & prior to commencing the hike. A work colleague at Monoweld Galvanisers, Danie van Wyk, had challenged me to a duel, a 42km race from Fairy Glen in Pretoria East to the western side of Acasia Park.

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The 1988 Wild Coast Trail – 25 year Retrospective Report – Part 1: The Journey

By Dean McCleland in Hiking 6 Comments

An unrivalled experience awaited us, the four members of George Malan’s hiking club eponymously called George Malan’s Hiking Club, before its transmogrification into the Quo Vadis Hiking Club as we set out to hike the Wild Coast Trail in August 1988. Having only previously done the Fish River Canyon Hike & the Blydepoort Trail with the Club, I was still the novice in the Club, minding my Ps & Qs – pints & quarts – so to speak. By now the team dynamics were becoming evident but this trail would expose those that were not the team players. Unfortunately it was not the appropriate time to do so but when is it ever?

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The German Epoch in Quo Vadis– Walter Baumgartl – In Memoriam

By Dean McCleland in Hiking, Personal 0 Comment

In 1994 the Quo Vadis Hiking Club was still teetering on the brink of extinction. Mick Crabtree had been a new appointment & shortly afterwards, his two mates Norman Dellar & Barry Williams had been brought into the Club. On our previous hike in the Drakensberg, a squat rotund Austrian – never call him German – appeared in the Club.

With Mike Brown deciding to retire from hiking altogether ostensibly due to shoulder problems but more likely due to complaints from the Spousal Department, a replacement was urgently required. Being work mates at CBI, Gunther invited his physical antithesis Walter Baumgartl to decisively outnumber the Prussian element represented by Kurt.

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IoT: What impact will it have on Road Running?

By Dean McCleland in Running 0 Comment

The next wave of technology is currently is the process of being born. Its impact will be profound, touching all of us in unimaginable ways.

Being so novel, even the name of this technology has not yet been agreed upon. A tentative proposal is the prosaic Internet of Things – IoT. Other suggested appellations are: machine to machine [MtM], machine to infrastructure [MtI], the Internet of Everything [IoE], the Internet of Intelligent Things or the totally trite & unimaginative Intelligent Systems.

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A Drab and Unremarkable Race with Pretensions: Gauteng Sports Challenge

By Dean McCleland in Running 0 Comment

Gauteng requires a big city marathon on the scale of the London Marathon but the Gauteng Sports Challenge doesn’t fit the bill

With all the hype & a large dollop of prize money, one would expect world class organisation, a stunning route a la the Two Oceans & the excitement of a large-city marathon.

Instead the Gauteng Sports Challenge of 2013 had none of these attributes.

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A Running Experience: A Hill too Far

By Dean McCleland in Running 0 Comment

On this day, the Loskop 50km ultramarathon running race had one hill too many, Faraday’s Hill. It was to be my nemesis.

Prologue

A Bridge Too Far is a 1977 War film based on the 1974 “A Bridge Too Far” book of the same name by Cornelius Ryan and directed by Richard Attenborough, brother of David Attenborough.

The film tells the story of the failure of Operation Market Garden during World War II, the Allied attempt to break through German lines and seize several bridges in the occupied Netherlands, including one at Arnhem, with the main objective of outflanking German defences.

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The First Time

By Dean McCleland in Running 0 Comment

Even 30 years later one can remember every detail, every nuance, every careless whisper. Despite the intervening years, all the feelings & emotions are remembered as if they were yesterday.The first time that your eyes met hers, the first surreptitious kiss. They are engraved in one’s mind never to be forgotten.

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Andre Hydenryck – In Memoriam

By Dean McCleland in Running 2 Comments

The Challenge

Having a goal or objective always serves as a great motivator whether it is at home, at work or in one’s sport. It always seems to compel one out of bed at 4am in the morning even on the coldest and wettest mornings.

Andre certainly needed one; and if truth be told, I did too. After running for 30+ years, Andre just went through the motions, so to speak, and had long since ceased to put any effort into his running.

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Large scale Army exercise in Bloubergstrand area in 1972

By Dean McCleland in Other Personal 0 Comment

Main picture: In the Army in 3SAI Battalion during 1971 in Oudshoorn

Prologue

The decrepit Army Bedford truck noisily made its way into the unknown with its cargo of twenty troops aboard. With its back flap also tied down, its cargo was cocooned within its own world.

The reason for our for these measures was that our platoon was going to be the enemy – a band of terrorists – for a large scale Army Exercise somewhere in South Africa.

The destination was classified but there were two dead give-aways: we were heading west all the time & we had a map of our destination: Bloubergstrand.

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