Modern Athlete Magazine Issue 95, June 2017 | Page 31

a few problems along the way. “Being unfamiliar with
races this long, I completely forgot to charge my
electronics. I ended up in a forest one night, when
there was almost no moon, and the unmarked trail
was extremely difficult to pick out. Suddenly, I realised
my GPS was almost flat and I was only carrying one
spare battery! I got a huge fright, because if I’d lost
power then I would never have found the trail again.”
the
podium
– he
won the
2014 Namaqua
120km four-day
trail race, the 2014 and
2015 Wolkberg 60km two-day
trail race, and the 2016 Addo 168km trail
race, amongst others – but the Munga was on another
level completely. When the race started, the field of
23 initially stuck together, since nobody seemed quite
sure how best to approach the daunting task ahead,
but by the 25km mark, Bennie had decided that it was
time to go for it. By the time he reached race village
three at 250km, he had built a commanding lead
of nearly six hours, while behind him the battle for
second was now between two women, Nicky Booyens
and Tatum Prins.
But while Bennie seemed to be cruising, he did have
Another night he lost all sense of direction in tall grass
at the bottom of a valley. “The grass was so thick,
and it was very disorientating. Eventually I came out
the other side and saw the trail markers, and I was so
pleased with myself, until about 300 metres later when
I looked at my GPS and realised I was running back
along my old path, in the wrong direction! My only
choice was to turn around and go through it all again.”
Navigationally Challenged
While those incidents were mildly amusing, they
allowed Nicky to close the gap and she ran with
Bennie for quite some way of the race. Bennie
eventually pulled clear again, but then made a serious
navigation error just 24km from the finish, which
allowed Nicky to take the lead. “It couldn’t have
happened at a more critical time,” he says. “At first, I
just thought my GPS was being funny and would auto-
correct, but it didn’t, and I ended up having to run
hard for an extra 14km to make up for that mistake.”
In the end, he only just snuck back into the lead,
coming home first in 101 hours and 25 minutes, with
Nicky finishing just two minutes later!
moving. Still, I’m surprised how well my race went –
at no stage did I feel any pressure on myself, except
for that last section just before finishing – but next
time I will definitely pack more batteries and a good
powerbank or two… because if it’s not on Strava, it
didn’t happen!”
“tough is a word
that gets South
African trail
runners going, and
none more so than
Bennie Roux”
Looking back on his epic run, Bennie can joke about
the lessons he learnt along the way. “Realising that
I couldn’t fully plan my run, I decided to just take it
as it comes and adapt. For example, I slept when I
needed to, and when I was feeling good, I just kept
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