Modern Athlete Magazine Issue 125, December 2019 | Page 50

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Undertaking the 90km Hobbit journey in the Eastern Cape is a running quest straight out of a Tolkien fantasy novel. Sarah
Hearn describes her experience on the trails around Hogsback.
So Rory ran back up the rocky mountain, adding a
few kilometres to his day’s tally, signed his time in at
a remote checkpoint, and then ran on through the
50
winding forest paths to climb up alongside a waterfall
and emerge at Cata Hut, still the first runner to slap
the iconic rock at the day’s finish, but not smashing
any records. Despite this, Rory was grinning. Because
it simply isn’t an adventure worth telling if there aren’t
any dragons!
That’s two quotes from fantasy writer JRR Tolkien
that have sneaked in to this article already. It’s almost
unavoidable in a report on a race called The Hobbit,
run from an odd little tie-dyed, pot-holed village
called Hogsback, the self-proclaimed Middle Earth
of South Africa, whose inhabitants don’t necessarily
climb mountains to get high. There is no record to
show Mr Tolkien ever donned a backpack and buff
and indulged in the endorphins of rock-hopping, but
his words resonate with all those who do. A liberal
sprinkling of them here serves to reinforce how much
this event epitomises his ideal.
ISSUE 125 DECEMBER 2019 / www.modernathlete.co.za
HOME OF THE HOBBITS
When good friends, adventure racing partners
and co-founders of Mountain Runner Events,
Graham Bird and Tatum Prins, took over the ‘Big
Bafer’ Border Amateur Fun EcoRun in 2011 they
decided to roll with a name that slips more easily
off the tongue, hence the Hobbit Hundred – which
is a nice alliteration, but a bit of a misnomer, as
it only ever measured between 90 and 95km,
depending on whose GPS was doing the counting.
While that’s close enough for some to claim their
century, several runners felt cheated upon learning
the route was a few kilometres short and proposed
an extra loop be tacked on to the second day’s
leg. After it had taken them 12 hours to complete
the first 47km and they came stumbling in well
after dark, these folks strongly vetoed their own
suggestion!
N
ot all who wander are lost... but elite trail
runner and habitual smasher of course records
Rory Scheffer was lost. Race director Graham
Bird, himself a respected navigator, had given a simple
race briefing for the Merrell Hobbit Journey runners.
“Follow the painted yellow footprints. If you haven’t
seen yellow footprints for a while, go back to where
you did. After Doornkop, when you get the choice to
go right or left, go right.” Rory went left. And he hadn’t
seen any yellow footprints for a while. (He wasn’t as
far off track as Helena was a few years back, when
Graham drove two hours around the mountain to pick
her up – along with some others she’d led astray – from
a shebeen. “Oh, and bring some cash,” she’d said on
the phone, “We’ve run up a tab.”)