Iceland D-Day

Well, after months of dreaming, planning and preparation, it’s finally here – Racing The Planet Iceland starts tomorrow. The finalising of the formal admin begins this morning with competitor briefing at 8am followed by check-in, where our kit will be (checked) and packs weighed.

Cramming what’s needed for seven days of running in cold and wet conditions is no easy feat – I think the time it has taken to plan and prepare the kit, mostly made up of mandatory requirements, and then do Houdini to squeeze it all into my 25L pack will be longer than the 30 plus hours it’s likely to take me to run this race.

Right now I’m feeling excited, afraid, filled with anticipation, and more than a tad daunted by the enormity of the challenge ahead. As if the 250km distance with a 9kg pack on my back is scary enough, rumour has it that the RTP course director Carlos is quite a sadist when it comes to route setting – if there’s a geological obstacle of any sort to be gone up/over/across rather than around, it’ll be guaranteed the route will be via the roughest section, even creating the top of said obstacle rather than the saddle.

my food & kit for the next 7 days
Add to that the prediction of bad weather forecast for Wednesday onwards, and we have the ingredients for an even spicier challenge.

I’m enormously privileged to be here, running this race. Iceland is a place that has always fascinated me, but one to which I knew I was never likely to travel to. But life often happens as you don’t quite expect it to, and for me a strange combination of circumstances unfolded in the first half of this year saw me able to sign up for this incredible race.

One of the reasons I’ll be giving RTP Iceland my absolute all is to raise funds for Solomon’s Haven, a wonderful place of safety for abused and/or abandoned children in Mitchell’s Plain in Cape Town. I’m trying to raise as much as I can for this special haven, and I really need your help!
some of the kids at Solomon's Haven saying hi!
Here’s the deal: you click on the DONATE NOW link at the top of my BackaBuddy page, and you leave the tough slog across tundra to me! My donation page is called http://www.backabuddy.co.za/champion/project/islandic250kmrace


Please remember folks, every donation – big or small – counts for a lot. Let's do it, together!

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