Category: On The Marc

  • 8 Miles

    8 Miles is exactly 12.8748km’s. Or 12874.80 meters. Or if we’re going to get technical here, it’s just shy of 515 lengths of a 25 meter pool. 515 lengths of a pool ?

    And so, on the 8th & 9th of February 2020, I’ll be swimming ALL 8 races at the largest open water event in the world, The Midmar Mile. I’ve joined the team from Friends of the Swimmers Trust & The Chad Le Clos Foundation, which promotes and provides Learn-to-Swim opportunities to communities on the North Coast of KZN, to help raise funds for this amazing cause.

    Being a swim family that attends numerous gala’s and open-water swims, we believe that every child is a swimmer, and drowning CAN be prevented with teaching EVERYONE to swim.

    Before I tell my story of how I got here, I wanted to pop the link for Fundraising in here -> 

    I’ll get to the nitty gritty of the Fundraising in a bit. (Read the story below first though!)

    You may be asking yourself, “how did you get here?”

    It’s quite a story, but I’m going to cut back to Feb 2018. It was, ironically, 3 days before the 2018 edition of the Midmar Mile. Our 3 (awesome, amazing, talented) kids were entered into their first Midmar Mile event. I had been attending a strength training gym for the last couple of months, and was at an early morning session with my daughter. My set for the day included a dead-lift, which I had done plenty times before. It was my last set, and I pulled up and felt the most crazy, ridiculous pain in my lower back.

    I immediately knew something wasn’t right and went straight home. Over the next couple of days I treated the pain with a couple of painkillers and anti-inflammatories. The Saturday morning before the Midmar event, we were staying on a farm in the Midlands, and when I woke up, I could hardly move. . The injury had progressed to a point where my wife had to take me down to the local hospital in an attempt to see how we could alleviate the pain.

    The Sunday was the main event and we went down to the dam. It was an awesome day out with the family and once again, our kids made us super proud!

    Allow me to be open with you about my life at the time: It wasn’t great. Far from it. I was overweight. Not just a little, but a lot. The “Strength Training” hadn’t helped, but I also ate terribly. It is hard for me to try and actually establish what my weight was at that time in my life, because, well, every scale we had used just showed “OL”. Which I guess stands for “Overload”.

    No scale could go past 150 kgs. This meant I was well over the 150 kg mark. And more likely closer to 160 kgs. Obesity was completely real. And it sucked. Obesity drags you into a dark place, without you even knowing. You are always tired, sick, grumpy and just fed up with everything.

    Fast forward a couple of months to June, and I was fortunate to get an amazing 3 week trip around Southern Africa, which wasn’t easy given the extreme back & leg pain I was in.

    On my way home I called my wife and asked her to make an appointment with the doctor I had seen before I left, to see if we can fix this. When he saw me, he suggested we do a laminectomy to remove a disc that had slipped in my lower back. It meant I had a 6 week recovery period, but I knew it had to be done.

    6 weeks on your back isn’t as fun as it sounds. But, it gave me lots (and lots) of time to think. I knew I had to make a change to my lifestyle & body, to make sure that, one day, I would be able to see these kids WIN the Midmar Mile.

    On the 2nd of September 2018 I celebrated my 40th surrounded by an amazing group of friends & family. 4 days later I went to the doctor for my final check up. They gave me the all clear and when I asked if I could start exercising. They agreed, as long as I went easy.

    So, the next day, on the 7th of September, I climbed into the pool at the local gym, and started swimmingAnd I swamAnd I swam.

    And then every day I went back and swam more, until I was swimming 1.6km non stop after 2 weeks. IT WAS AMAZING.

    Because swimming is a low-impact exercise, it gives a cardio workout while simultaneously building muscle, and as I soon started to find out, it also helps shed weight. I started losing weight and I could start feeling a difference in my body. I also started doing Parkruns on Saturday mornings, and even got a Mountain Bike. I basically became a pro athlete, right?

    Fast forward to October 2019.
    I feel like a brand new person. More than 30kgs down.
    Like a different person.
    Like I want to make a difference.
    Like being able to do things I never thought were possible.
    Like being able to believe in yourself.
    Like swimming 8 miles, or 515 lengths of a pool, over 2 days

    But I am humbly proud of where I am today and how far I have come. I’ve done one Capital K Swim, one Midmar swim, two 10km runs, one triathlon which became a duathlon, four Dolphin Mile swims, one Hot Amashova, one Sun City 1.5km Swim and thirty one (thirty one!) Parkruns and over 256km of Pool Swims!!!

    I’m about to embark on eight Midmar Miles in two days. From over 150 kgs, to eight Midmar Miles in a single year. I want you to know, that no matter how dark things may seem, they can get better. You do have what it takes. Trust me. You don’t need to believe in yourself, you just need to believe my story.

    In conclusion, I have a goal of R12,000 to raise over the next couple of months towards the Friends of the Swimmers Trust & The Chad Le Clos Foundation. As I mentioned earlier, the focus of these 2 foundations is to ensure that every child in South Africa is able to swim. South Africa’s drowning mortality rate is estimated to be around 1500 drownings PER YEAR. Across all age groups. And we can help prevent that.

    If you can, I would appreciate any sort of contribution to help towards this fantastic cause.

    My personal Online Fundraising page is located at 

    I’ll be posting some of my training in the buildup as well as event reports once we done with Midmar 8 Mile in 2020!

  • How to get your Apple Watch Workout Swims to Strava & Garmin Connect (and still get your Discovery Points)

    I’ve been doing quite a bit of swimming over the last couple of months after a back op in July last year. Everyday I do around 1-2km of swimming at the Gym, and am loving it!

    One of the things I battled with in the beginning was recording my swims. I used to have the Apple Watch 1, which wasn’t Waterproof, so I manually updated it. But I recently upgraded to the Apple Watch 3, which is waterproof and logs your swims.

    Once I had that sorted, I wanted to be able to keep track of what I was doing, and one thing that frustrated me with the Apple Health app, where your workouts are recorded to, is that it doesn’t allow you to export your workouts, or share them with other apps. More often than not, the info there is VERY simple, and doesn’t offer you the functionality to delve deeper into the stats, or show you how far you’ve trained over a certain period.

    We all know Strava is the Go-To app for cycling and running, and the stats you get from there are amazing. They also offer the ability to log swims as well, and show you info on your pace & heart rate. Garmin Connect (the official Garmin app for Garmin Watches) also allows you to view a lot more info like speed over distance, number of strokes, average time & heart rate. Combined these apps show loads more info than the standard Apple Health App.

    So I did some digging and came across an app called RunGap. RunGap (iTunes Link) allows you to export and import from various workout platforms and share your workouts. So, as an example when I am finished a workout on my Apple Watch, it can sync over to Garmin, Strava, TrainingPeaks and loads of other services.
    RunGap is a free app to download, but they charge you R49.99 for a 3 month subscription to be able to post to other services. This is well worth it though!!

    To get started once you have logged your workout in your Apple Watch, open Run Gap. You will need to setup the accounts you want to connect to before hand and authenticate with them.

    You will then need to import the workout from Apple Health, and it will show you all the info about the workout in the Details screen.

    You can then select Edit to add notes or rename the workout and then “Share” to share it to the various platforms. You’ll see it’s pretty instant and you can go into the other apps and view the info there.


    This is a really great way to share your workouts to other platforms, and best of all you get your Discovery points for your workout. This is key when doing runs etc, because if you had to log it just in Strava as an eg, you won’t get your points. It has to be logged in Apple Watch

  • I’m going on an (AWESOME) adventure… Hello Put Foot Rally 2018

    I’m going on an (AWESOME) adventure… Hello Put Foot Rally 2018

    Towards the middle of last year, 2 of my mates came to me and said “We’ve booked our tickets to go on Put Foot Rally 2018, and you coming with”
    Naturally, the answer was YES. I had heard about Put Foot Rally when it first started and Mike Sharman went on it. I knew that one day it was something I HAD to do, but didn’t ever plan it. Until last year :) And Team 22 Bosfark was born

    So next week Friday, the 15th June, we embark on this amazing journey. The event start on the 16th in Melkbos with a huge registration party, before teams leave the next morning bright and early to get to their first destination.
    The beauty of Put Foot is that you don’t have to follow a specific route, and it’s up to you to get to the next checkpoint in each country.

    The countries that you visit are Namibia, Botswana, Zambia, Malawi & Mozambique. (Our semi-planned route is here) All over an 18 day drive through Southern Africa.

    The highlight of the trip being the checkpoint in Zambia where we will be donating over 2000 pairs of school shoes to kids in Zambia. Each team (this year there are 16 teams!!!) had to raise funds to get the shoes specially made from a company in South Africa.

    We decided from the start we wanted to enter the vintage class, which as to be a car from before 1994. After checking out a couple of cars, we came across an awesome 1984 230E Mercedes Benz, which was in a great condition and price. We purchased it on the spot, and had our chariot sorted.

    After many months of planning, getting th car sorted, getting a roof rack made, we are 10 days away from hitting the road.
    You will be able to track us live on the Put Foot Rally website – http://www.putfootrally.com and we will also be documenting our journey on our Instagram Page (@BosFarkPutFoot) as well as Facebook

    I’ll also do a full blog post once we have done our trip (who knows might even do 1 or 2 while we on the road)

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    So looking forward to this…

  • Mindgame Escape Umhlanga Review

    Mindgame Escape Umhlanga Review

    Last week Saturday we were invited by the the team from Mindgame Escape in Umhlanga to join them for the opportunity to try and “escape” from one of their escape rooms. Escape Rooms is a physical adventure where you have to solve puzzles, and clues in order to work your way out of the room, usually within a pre-determined time limit.

    This has to honestly be one of the most fun afternoons out that I have had in a REALLY long time. Being a parent we often are restricted to just doing what the kids want to do. So when I asked a few of our friends if they were keen for something different, everyone jumped at the opportunity.

    When we arrived, we were met by Monique, who took us through a quick 2 minute video on what Mindgame Escape is all about. We had decided to do the Sherlock Holmes Baker Street mystery, where we needed to find out who the “murderer” was.

    Essentially, you are locked in a room with an hour to escape using a whole bunch of clues, riddles & locks. Without giving too much away, the thought that went into some of the clues was amazing. We don’t often think to look in the simple places for the most obvious things, and that’s really how your mind should work at Mindgame Escape. You are also allowed to call for hints at anytime, which will help with solving the clues.

    We finally made it out at 56:29, so literally with a few minutes to spare. Apparently only around 35% of people make it out. The record for that specific room was broken on the same day at 46 minutes!!

    All of our friends that were with us, really enjoyed the experience. We literally couldn’t stop talking about it, and what we could have done differently.

    The pricing of Mindgame Escape varies from R250pp (for 2 people) to R200pp (for 6 people) and is well well worth it. You can also book your slot online at https://www.mindgame.co.za/ and also check out more info about the rooms and about the whole concept. Once again, this is a highly recommended if you feel like doing something different and giving your brain a bit of a workout!

    Disclaimer: Mindgame Escape invited us to join them to try out one of their escape rooms. I was not asked to blog or talk about it, but it was honestly so amazing, I can’t stop. I know we’ll all definitely be back for the Houdini room very, very soon!

     

     

  • Qustodio from Appsafe – Awesome Parental control software

    Qustodio from Appsafe – Awesome Parental control software

    It’s been a while since I have come across a really good app that I don’t mind paying a subscription for. And being a dad to 3 (awesome) kids, I want to ensure my kids are safe on the internet. All 3 of my kids have iPads, which we bought a few years ago, and I have heard some horror stories recently about how kids have been dared or sent to the dark ugly internet.

    I am a firm believer that our kids were born into this technology era, so we need to embrace it, but have to ensure that we protect them and give them the tools to ensure they and the devices they using are safe.  The key for me for these types of issues is to ensure they is a) a trust between child & parent, and b) an education from parent to child to warn them about the realities of what is really out there.

    So when a friend of mine told me about an awesome new app he was going to start reselling in South Africa through his company called AppSafe, called Qustodio, I had to check it out.

    Qustodio is one of many solutions on the internet that allow parents to monitor and control devices. There are plenty of solutions, but I haven’t seen one as comprehensive as Qustodio and at a really affordable price. For only R650 a year, you can protect up to 5 devices across your family. You can install Qustodio on iOS, Android, Windows & even Mac.

    Some of the features that stand out for me on Qustodio include:

    • Setting multi-device time limits, right down to app level. So if I only want my kids to be on Youtube for 1 hour a day, I can set that per day
    • You can view social media network activity, with a full report of new friends added etc
    • Block Pornography and other dodgy sites. Some really scary stuff out there!
    • Track SMS & Calls
    • Location tracking & panic button for mobile devices

    You also get a daily email that is sent to your account with a summary of the history on the devices for the previous day. This is really great to see what your kid has been up to.

    So many people ask me, but why would you want to restrict your child? Again, I believe that we are really just protecting our children from is out there. Having been in the internet industry for around 18 years now, I can promise you I have seen it all. I would rather give my kids tools to help protect them!

    You can purchase a One Year 5 device license for only R650 from AppSafe.co.za. This works out a LOT cheaper that having to buy it in USD. They also are really helpful when it comes to support and also offer a 14 day money back guarantee if you are unhappy with your purchase. You can also email them on [email protected]

    Disclaimer: I was not asked or paid to write about this service. It really is a fantastic service and well, well worth the money!