Bicycle Race Weekend

The last two weeks with my new Resource Guardianship students has been hectic to say the least. All the preparation for the bicycle race had to be done so that the riders could be as safe as possible on the route.

Tuesday 12 July 2011 & Wednesday 13 July 2011
Was asked to go out with Mel on quad bikes to go on the bicycle routes so that we could see all the work that had to be done. We rode the entire stretch past the Olifant Kamp, up under the eskom lines, past the Tambuki koppies down to the Maroela dam.

Thursday 14 July 2011-Friday 22 July 2011
The hard work began, more than a week of hard graft on the bicycle trails so that we could have everything ready for the race. We started with splitting the students up into four groups with the hope of covering a lot of ground relatively quickly, but we ran into a major problem this way and were actually held back due to the students becoming easily fatigued. We went on like this for a couple of days until we came to realize it just wasn't working, so a change of plans was in order. We decided to move along as one large group through the whole trail, which was a lot more effective, the work got done a lot quicker and was a lot neater. The students I had working with me on the trails worked very hard and were hurting by the end of the trails. The first years learned a lot about maintaining in field infrastructure while they were busy on the trails. Maintaining in field infrastructure was one of the first year unit standards to be covered, meanwhile myself, Zenobia and San-Mari got to cover one of our second year unit standards as well, this being Maintaining paths and tracks.

Saturday 23 July 2011
Saturday was just an unbelievably crazy day. We had to be at work at 6:30 in the morning to start the preparation for the bicycle race. My day started with fetching the cruiser so that the marshals could be put out on the track for t6he race. Thereafter I went to fetch my quad bike for the day as I was going to be out on the track as both a marshal and a sweeper. I marshaled for the 5km race then was asked to wait for the 20 km and 40 km races to go out before showing the ambulance where to be stationed on the course. Once that was done, I was sent to sweep for the 40 km race, I drove the trail behind the riders to assist anyone who got hurt or got punctures. Once the race was done the clean up of the caravan park started, this took a good couple of hours where after I took the guests at the caravan park on a game drive.

Sunday 24 July 2011
A very quiet day for all of the students, and a good opportunity to just relax a little bit more. It was a day of mostly clean up work where we went out and collected all the danger tape and sign boards for the race.