Category: Personal

  • 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…

  • What are Fidget Spinners and why are they the craze!!

    What are Fidget Spinners and why are they the craze!!

    If you have kids between the ages of 5-25 (or even 45 :)) you may or may not have heard of Fidget Spinners. They are they new craze and kids are going crazy for them.

    Essentially Fidget spinners are moulded plastic or metallic devices that have bearings in them, and you then spin them. The fun comes in when there are a whole bunch of tricks that you can do as well. Think back to the Yo-Yo in 87, and you on the same path.

    After my kids continue to nag me for days, I eventually got them one and loved the concept. And so, Fidgety, an online Fidget Spinner shop, was born. I have been sourcing stock from a number of people and going to keep adding some of the coolest spinners around. We already have stock of the awesome LED Fidget Spinners, as well as the Tri Fidget Spinners.

    I have seen a couple of really cool videos online with guys doing tricks, so will post those on the Fidget Spinners Tips & Tricks page, as well as on our Facebook page.

    We offer overnight courier (to major centres) around South Africa for R100, or if you stay in the Durban/Ballito area, you are welcome to collect from us.

    Keep watching, cause I suspect this craze is only get bigger and bigger!!

  • Back after a Malware Hack

    Back after a Malware Hack

    If you subscribe to my RSS feed or Feedburner newsletter, I have to apologise for some of the dodgy posts you may have seen in the last couple of days.

    It turns out, WordPress sometimes isn’t as great as it sounds, and malware attacks are a real threat. Added to that, somehow the hackers had the ability to post rubbish articles, which in turn made Google unhappy and they blocked the site.

    I am however glad to say, that after hours of trying to decipher where the issue lay, and reading loads of articles I finally managed to get rid of the insane JS:MW22 jquery malware that was planted in my theme code.

    So back to regular programming coming soon!!!