One late February evening in 2013, I stood at the edge of Blue Lagoon in Durban, staring at the smashed remnants of an incomplete sporting career. 39 years old, soaking wet, scratched, bruised, exhausted and – worst of all – last to finish the Dusi Canoe
Marathon, I was not so much disheartened as finished – klaar.
But before I tell that story, it needs some contextualising.
South Africa, in particular, has a fascination with mass-participation, long-distance events: The
Comrades, The Midmar Mile, The Argus, The Dusi.
These events offer the average Joe – or Josephine, for that matter – their own personal Olympics.
The great conservationist and pioneer, Ian Player, said of his first ventures down the Umsindusi and
Umgeni rivers, on which the Dusi is run, that “no…
