With sport personalities such as Pierre Spies, Stanton Fredericks, Gcobani Bobo, Jimmy Tau and Vanessa Haywood already on board for the event, all that was left to do was test the fitness of those public entrants who fancied their chances of either running an average of 30km daily or cycling an average of 120km per day.
"The objective of today's exercise was to test those individuals who applied to partake in the race, ensuring that their fitness levels are at a high enough level," says Gishma Johnson, corporate communications manager of Continental Tyre South Africa. "On one of the days we've set the runners a mammoth 50km run and the cyclists a 160km cycle, which means that whomever we choose from the list of public entries needs to hold his or her own. This is perhaps one of South Africa's most challenging adventure races and with the grand prize being a trip to the 2014 FIFA World Cup™ Brazil we expect nothing but the very best from the human body and mind."
The final athletes were tested by race experts at the Pretoria High Performance Centre as well as the Sports Science Institute in Cape Town as they were judged on their ability, track record and passion to win. Also tested was their body composition and functional movement analysis through various time trials. The two cyclists to have made it through onto this year's Continental Run2Stop Challenge are Robert Bateman and Greg Black. Runners Neil Quayle and Bennie Roux will be joining them and will no doubt thrive on spending five days competing with the likes of Shaun Meiklejohn, Nick Bester and Yolandi du Toit.
