We all love Trevor Ball's events: They're fun, action packed, often in adverse weather conditions, and if you're still awake at the end of the day, you've got a good chance of walking away with a prize.

The Mast Challenge: Man vs Machine.  Will the runners ever beat the cyclists to the top?  Seems unlikely with an 8min gap between the top riding and running times.

The challenge is to get to the top as fast as possible, either by foot or on bike.  Or, like me, you can't decide which and do both.  Run first, make your way down in your own time along the hiking trail, don your helmet and hop on your bike to do it all over again.

When the wind is blowing a gale and almost knocking you off your feet, the thought of going back up on a bike is far from desirable.  But once a race has started, it's very hard to give up midway, so up on the bike I headed, finding that the run had served as a bonus as I knew which corners to brace myself for the wind.  Even still, I was pushed around and got hairily close to the edges of the road, eventually putting a foot down.  The flipside is that when the wind was behind you, all you need to do is sit up and you fly uphill without pedalling (practically).

For the first time I managed to do a faster ride (1:11:31) than run (01:16:16) finishing 5th lady of 11, and 38th Overall of 53.

I'm happy.

And I was awake enough to get hold of a First Ascent Hydration pack in the "lucky draw".  Nice :)

Results, pics, etc can be found at: http://www.trailrunning.co.za