On Saturday 23rd September, Soft Power Education held an awesome 12 hour cycle marathon. We had 14 teams of 4, and 2 solo riders competing for the most laps in 12 hours. For Jackie and Shaz, the day started at 5am, marking out the course, on a quad bike, in the pouring rain. The course was a dirt track, so anyone who has been to Uganda, and Bujagali in particular, will know that after 6 hours of rain, the course was a sticky mess of red mud.
The fun started at 730am, when the rain had stopped. The lucky members of each team, who were selected to do the 1st lap, set off taking anywhere from 20 minutes to 2 hours to complete the 5kms. Bikes got clogged up with mud and refused to move, cyclists carried their bikes any which way just to get round the course. A new reason to where a cycle helmet emerged - to make it easier to carry your bike on your head...
After the initial wet start, the sun shone and dried out the course, and the laps mounted up. The winning team with the most laps, was Nile Breweries (see photo below), and the winning individual entry was Jesper (see photo below) who completed an astonishing 42 laps - over 200km! The sponsorship money for the event is still coming in, but so far we have raised over $2000 - to put that into perspective, that is enough to refurbish a classroom, buy 60,000 brinks, or 11,000Kgs of cement. We would like to extend our huge thanks to all those who took part and all our sponsors. We hope that you will all join us again for next years marathon. Here are just a few photos of the day:
If you are a Soft Power Education volunteer wanting to promote your fundraising event, please email sharon@softpowereducation.com with details to be posted on this page.
