Modern Athlete Magazine Issue 115, February 2019 | Page 37

TRAIL RUNNING
not been trying to kill me, he was likely just another
ex-convict who actually preferred going back prison,
to get back into the system, and that I was just in the
wrong place at the wrong time. He ended up going
back in for another 25 years, and for all I know is still
there.”
Meanwhile, the story had made the news, describing
how a tourist had been the victim of a mugging and
stabbing in the city, and while not entirely true, it
actually saved Lee. “I was so worried about being
caught as an illegal worker that I hadn’t even given a
thought to the bill for the ambulance and treatment in
the hospital, which came to three thousand dollars,
but in a stroke of luck, I received a joint letter from
the hospital and the Mayor’s office to apologise for
what had happened to me in their city, and that the
bill would be written off due to me being a victim of
crime!”
Lee with the kids of the Schaumberg Community
Of course, the award did not come as too much of a
surprise to those that knew Lee, because it seemed
there was nothing she couldn’t do. After all, in 2014
she had become just the third South African woman
to climb Mount Everest!
HIMALAYAN EXPEDITION
STARTING OVER
Lee remained in New York a further four months until
her visa ran out, and after finally conceding defeat on
the Nike dream, she flew home in January. “I went
there on a wing and a prayer, but when I got there,
everything that could go wrong did. My ego was
downtrodden, I had failed, but I realised my ladder
was against the wrong building,” she says. “When my
twin sister Kim picked me up at the airport, I told her
I’m in a bad way financially. She asked me how much
I had, so I told her just under 400. Dollars, she asked?
No, Rands, I answered...”
Fortunately, Lee’s irrepressible spirit soon saw her
bounce back. After all, she had landed her first job
with adidas after finding the company’s telephone
number in the Yellow Pages, then telephonically
convinced the marketing director that she needed
20 minutes of his time. She got the meeting, and a
job. Now she found an opportunity to start an event
company within a creative agency in Johannesburg,
and admits it was a case of ‘fake it till you make it’
at first. Having started Blue Platinum Events, Lee
got her big break in 2003 when a client requested an
event on Robben Island to launch a new truck and
everybody said it couldn’t be done. “We got the trucks
over to the island on barges and it was a spectacular
success.
That really launched Lee’s new company, with
success following success, and in September
2015 she won the entrepreneur category in the
Businesswomen’s Association of South Africa’s
Businesswoman of the Year Awards. “The award was
wonderful recognition for 15 years of commitment,
dedication, tenacity and giving it all I had,” says Lee.
In 2012, Lee had organised an event with swimmer
Lewis Pugh as guest speaker, and his talk got her
thinking about looking for her own next big adventure.
“I ran the Two Oceans and Comrades ultra’s in 2000,
did another Two Oceans in 2012 and had done three
full Ironmans in PE, but the only mountain I had
climbed was Kilimanjaro, so I mailed Lewis to tell
him I wanted to climb Everest in 2013. That Monday
after his talk, I Googled ‘How do I climb Everest,’
and found out the whole trip would take two months,
which is a lot for a business owner, and would cost
R600,000! I decided that if I was going to spend that
much time and money on a personal adventure, then
I wanted to do it to raise awareness and funds for a
good cause.”
She found that cause a short while later when a
friend told her about the amazing children of the
Schaumburg community, an informal settlement of
some 1200 shacks near the Hartbeespoort Dam.
“Most of the inhabitants of the community are
migrant labourers or people who are displaced from
neighbouring countries, with many children living
with grannies or extended families because parents
are deceased or working far away from home,” says
Lee. “There were no fixed medical or child care
facilities, and a mobile clinic visited the area just once
a month.” The Field of Dreams Children’s Centre was
Lee’s vision for the children of this community, and
her aim was to raise funds through donations and
sponsorship of her Everest climb.
Lee duly signed up with a Canadian expedition
company, Peak Freaks, because one line on their
website caught her eye, “We’ve got a 100% safety
record,” whereas the other companies seemed more
concerned about their success rate of getting clients
to the summit. “They wouldn’t take me due to the fact
that I was a novice climber, because they said I was a
high risk that could affect their climbing record.”
She duly proved them wrong by summiting, but she
admits it was incredibly hard, especially the night
before the summit. “I’d never been that high before,
so didn’t know what to expect, and the Death Zone
above 8000m was an incredible ordeal. Also, I simply
couldn’t train for that cold. It was minus-21 the first
night, and the coldest it got was minus-34 the night
before the summit. I just kept repeating my mantra,
‘Manage the cold, don’t let the cold manage you.’
Everest was the hardest thing I have ever done,
but the greatest gift, and I learnt that nothing is
impossible.
SAHARAN ADVENTURE
Back home, Lee’s climb for a cause received
widespread coverage, including an insert on Carte
Blanche, and with the money she raised, she
launched the Field of Dreams Foundation in 2014,
followed in 2015 by the construction of the Field of
Dreams Children’s Centre. It provides a safe and
learner-friendly space for both children and adults,
and includes a toy and book library, a soccer field
where the kids can play, and a mobile clinic. But soon
Lee decided that another gruelling challenge was
needed, once again to raise funds, with the goal in
mind of making the mobile clinic a permanent facility.
So in 2016, she signed up for the 2017 edition of the
Marathon Des Sables, the 250km multi-day stage
run through the Saharan Desert in Morocco.
“The best part for me was carrying the same South African flag through
the race that I took to the top of Everest, and even better was that I was
doing the race to raise more funds for the Foundation.”
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