Merrel Eden Duo

The past two weekends has seen some last minute training and tuning for the team.With long hikes and kloofing sections one has to spend time on ones feet during training. The bike legs will be tougher than you think and then the paddle across Swartvlei is looking really good for the teams who come from paddling backgrounds but still do able for those who are starting out.

Good luck to all the teams and travel safely those coming from afar.

Pennypinchers AR Team

Pennypinchers AR Team

Some history of The Pennypinchers Adventure Racing Team


The team started in 2007 when three of the members James,Chris and newbee Jeff hatched the dream of doing the Bull Of Africa 2008.
Chris put together a proposal which James took into Pennypinchers Plettenberg Bay owner and fellow paddler Sean Gannon. Sean liked the proposal and backed the team in its dream even though the race was 10 months away. The hunt was then on to find a fourth member of the team which due to adventure racing rules needed to be a female. It is really difficult to find someone to share the dream of spending 6 days together,hiking,biking,kayaking,climbing,abseiling and navigating around Africa, wearing the same clothes and hardly sleeping. It was only late in June 2008 that Jo Mackenzie put up her hand as the fourth member of our team. During this time the team involved itself in various outdoor activities including the Cape Epic, The Garmin Wartrail, The Knysna Oyster Festival events and then training. Outdoor gear is expensive but a vital part of the sport and fellow adventure racer and owner of Earth Scout in Knysna Belen Sanchez came to the party and along with Hele Hansen became our gear sponsor providing us with the best outdoor gear available.

The Bull was amazing with the team finishing in 1oth place out of the 43 international teams that started. Since then the Team has continued its good work with good results in the Eden Duo 2008 and the Cape Odyssey Trail Run. 2009 saw Jeff take part in the Cape Epic again, James had a great trip to the Swazi Extreme where with Team Aish.com he won the sport event. August 2009 saw the team with a new girl Amanda Williamson take on the Hessequa Adventure Race and finish as the third official team. Here we were added another product sponsor to our team sheet with Island Tribe providing us with great sun protection and Blue Steel Sports providing the best anti-chafe money can buy.

The team is now in the full throes of training for the Merrel Eden Duo. The race sees all the current members taking part in the race. We will have teams in the mixed,ladies and school relays.
Watch this space for the build up.

A morning ride with Pennypinchers

The Pennypinchers are getting into the zone for the upcoming Merrell Eden Duo (MED). Hoping to glean some useful info, they asked me to accompany them on a morning MTB ride (this they would do after tripping the firt kloofing leg of the MED). So off we went, all seemed to go well, we enjoyed the singletrack in Saasveld, felt the burn in our quads as we spun up the steep section after Pesi-Pools and enjoyed a relaxed ride on to Witfontein enjoying the view of the mountain every time it peaked out from behind the clouds.

When we got to Witfontein we decided to skip the Montagu Pass ride as the Pennypinchers still had to ride back to Saasveld and then on to Wilderness. On the way back to Saasveld I slipped off a root and straight into a tree. The result was a badly buckled back rim and a few scratches to my elbow and knee.

Here are two photos of my rim after the crash.

Who are we?

Thanks for taking the time to read up about us!

The Pennypinchers AR team are a group of outdoor enthusiasts who live in the Garden Route area.

Members come from Sedgefield in the west to Storms River in the east and we regularly get together to enjoy a run, ride or paddle in the adventure capital of South Africa!

One of our proudest moments was being able to finish the Bull of Africa, a 570 km expedition race in 2008. However, each race has it's highlights and challenges and so we keep coming back for more!

We have a large squad of athletes and when we can, we enter them all, in 2008 there were 3 Pennypinchers Teams racing in the Eden Duo, with our all ladies team scooping up the first prize in the ladies competition and our mixed team winning the mixed competition on a technicality - Martin and Jeannie raced in the men's / open category!

We are also involved at a grass-roots level and invest a lot of time in the Montessori AR Squad. These kids have shown great potential and we look forward to the day when they will race against us in the open category and hopefully give us a run for our money!

We hope you enjoy our blog, we hope to share some of our adventures with you in this way!