SA Rocks

The Discovery/702 Walk The Talk is officially over. And it was phenomenal.

There were close to 40 000 people who walked across the board, that includes the 5KM, 8KM, 20(ish)KM and 40(ish)KM walks. Throughout the walk I tried to do a walkthrough podcast that explained what the team and I were up to, what we discussed, saw and heard. However much of it wasn’t really useful as the noise was too much. Much of it I have strung together and will be releasing tomorrow as the 5th SA RocksCast. Lookout for that one!

For now let me take you through the day:

The instructions suggested that all “athletes” arrive at the venue 2 hours before the start of their walk. That meant that we were at the start very early. The event was so well organised that almost all of the 5KM participants were ready and waiting to start about 45minutes before the start was scheduled. Brilliant.

The spirits of the participants was extremely high and everyone was keen to have a bit of a stroll and a good time. The only issue that I had with the start was that the commentary from the 702 DJs was a bit too loud and in your face. This was quickly resolved after the start as we moved past Jenni and Aki and took it all in our stride. By that I mean a slow stride.

This event is such a joy for various reasons, one of these reasons being the lack of competitiveness. No one is there to win because there are no winners. Everyone receives a medal at the end and we all felt like winners. I was accompanied by a very small but well equipped team of 5 (include myself). I put this first event down to experience. Next year I hope to have a massive team consisting of more than just SA Rocks T-shirts that get lost in the crowd. I was thinking something along the lines of overalls for next year, painted or dyed in a lumo-green colour!

While minding my own business and enjoy a lovely stroll I bumped in to Steve Waugh. Can you believe it? What a great testament to the event and our lovely country and beautiful city, to have the ex-Australian cricket captain taking part! (On a side note, I hear that Steve now lives in SA, how’s that for choosing the better of two countries?)

Once we carried on it dawned on the SA Rocks team that there were thousands and thousands… and thousands of people taking part in the walk. We participated in the 5KM walk which was more than enough for our fist go. Everywhere we looked there were happy, contented, walking, talking and bubbly people.

Eventually we hit the 4KM mark and were pleased to see it. We walked for just over an hour (approximately 1hr 15mins) which I thought wasn’t too shabby. After reaching the finish line we were quickly handed medals, ushered to the party area and walked through to our cars. The event was so well organised that within 20 minutes we had walked to our cars and made our way away from any and all traffic.

I would like to thank the people who supported the idea, who walked with me today and all the people in JHB (and elsewhere) who took part. I can’t exactly tell you why I was so proud and contented to take part in the event but I can tell you that it was worth every step.

Obviously there is more to tell but I don’t want to bore people so I suggest taking part next year, checking out the photos in the SA Rocks group and listening to the podcast tomorrow!

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