Oyster Festival Training

It is now just a little more than week to go before the Oyster Festival.

• The Kats will have a full schedule kicking off with 80 km MTB on Saturday 5 July.
• We will then do the Salomon Night Run on Sunday, Magnetic South allowed us to take along some of the Knysna Canoe Club Development Kids, so this will be their first taste of some night time adventure.
• On Monday it is the Vaude Night Bike.
• Tuesday sees us participating in the inaugural Salomon Featherbed Trail Run.
• Some of the team members will also be taking part in the Land Rover Water Front Rush. We are very thankful to Magnetic South for this opportunity to participate in their events!
• After a day or two of catching up at work we will then tackle the 42 km Forest Marathon on Saturday 12th
• We hope to finish it all off with a warm down paddle in the Extra Hot Nando's 18 km Paddle Challenge on Sunday 13.

If only all training could be this much fun! We hope to see you there!

Training Camp in Nature's Valley

On the long weekend, Team Kat Leisure decided to make full us of some time off work to get together and train in the beautiful Nature's Valley area. The weekend started off with a gear check and basic first aid session on Friday night.

On Saturday morning the real fun started with 20 km trail run. One section involved climbing up a steep hill, with another section involving a cold crossing of the Sout River, brrr

Then came the bike leg, we had our work cut out to navigate to Spitskop in the Keurbooms Forestry area. Starting at sea-level we would be climbing to about 630 m, so this was definately not an "easy" ride. About 70 km later, and a thrilling night descent of the Groot River Pass back to Nature's Valley we had supper and discussed the days events.

Halfway through the night the Pennypinchers Team arrived in Nature's Valley after their long training session and were very excited about finishing their mission. But the Kats were in dreamland and did not really show the same amount of enthusiasm!

Sunday morning arrived with more sunny skies, which was a good thing as we were going to have a paddle on the lagoon and then move on to some rope skills sessions. After some safety talks by David, we were off and at first trying to steer the Fluid was almost impossible, but after a while we started getting better.

While setting up the ropes section, we saw a whale jumping out of the sea, and then plopping back into the water. It was an amazing site!

Once the ropes were setup, we did an abseil and a traverse, at first Merilene's knees were shaking, but after the she was smilling broadly when she finished. Werner, who works with ropes for a living showed us how to do a "speed traverse".














After a hectic weekend, we packed up our kit and headed home. Some team members will be heading to the Breede River with the Knysna and Plett Canoe Clubs for some river paddling. The Kats will be in full force at the Oyster Festival in Knysna after some entries were sponsored by Magnetic South, www.magneticsouth.net, organizers of the various sporting events at the Oyster Festival.