Modern Athlete Magazine Issue 121, August 2019 | Page 60

Africa and lined up a week later in the Bastille Day
25km in Franschhoek, and came away with a win and
a course record on the new route. “It was a very good
run for me, and I took 10 minutes off the previous
course record, which I am pretty happy with.” (For the
record, Kane Reilly still holds the record on the old
route.)
Vomiting repeatedly
forced Rory to take
regular breaks during
the Dodo Trail
Looking ahead to next year, Rory adds that he
wants to go back to the Giants Cup event in the
Drakensberg and give the course record a good go.
“This year they put up a R20,000 pot for anyone
that broke set time goals, and I needed to break six
hours. Most of the race I was on track for it and going
for the money, but when I had 10 kays to go, I knew
that even if could keep going at that pace, I was still
going to miss it by a few minutes, so I thought, let me
just enjoy it now. I finished in 6:13 and still broke the
course record, and Nicolette Griffioen was the only
one who eventually went under the allocated time.
Hey, I’m still young, so next year, I’ll go back and
hopefully get a part of the pot, if it’s still on offer.”
WHEN NOT RUNNING
Apart from running, Rory is focused (pun intended)
on his photography business, The Mountain Room,
which he co-owns with fellow photographer Xavier
Briel. “We’re a fully digital content creation studio and
mostly service outdoor brands, or outdoor events,
which really fits into our lifestyle. A unique selling point
is that we’re both athletes, so we’re a lot more mobile
and can run or ride with the athletes when shooting
events. For example, Xavier ran the whole of the Ultra-
Trail Drakensberg 100km with his camera. It’s almost
unheard of for a photographer to run the whole route
of an event he’s covering!”
“Later this year I’ll be shooting a motorbike enduro
event again, and there aren’t many photographers I
know of that can actually ride a motorbike with the
competitors. It allows us to get to spots on the route
that are not accessible to other photographers. But I
do try to stay away from shooting trail running events,
because I’d rather be racing them, so I’m trying to
Rory admits to being a bit
superstitious, and thus never races
without the Buff that his father
gave him, which he wraps around
his wrist
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ISSUE 121 AUGUST 2019 / www.modernathlete.co.za
focus more on the cycling and motorbike space in
terms of event shoots.”
Outside of running and photography, another passion
for Rory is coffee, and he has a huge collection of
coffee-making equipment at home. “For as long as I
can remember I’ve enjoyed good coffee, more so now
that I have started running. I think it’s part and parcel
of being a trail runner. So I do have an extensive range
of coffee paraphernalia at home, and I have actually
worked as a coffee barista at a coffee shop, while I
was studying. I really enjoy the art of coffee-making,
and my dream has always been to have a shop similar
to The Vine here in Hout Bay – it’s the ideal set-up, a
coffee shop and a running shop, where people can
do runs from and then have a coffee afterwards. Who
knows, maybe one day I’ll have something like that...
but for now, the focus is running and photography.”
Naturally, this result was yet another confidence
boost for Rory after a tough first half of the year, and
he says he is now really looking forward to the rest
of the year’s racing. “I’m running the CCC at the end
of August, then it’ll be the Otter again in October,
and in between there’s an adventure race that I’m
hoping to do in September. I’ll see how I’m feeling,
and it’s all based on how I feel after each race. Then in
November it’ll be the Ultra-Trail Cape Town 100km. So
it’s three more big races for the year, and the rest will
just be training at home.”