On Friday last week the Continental Run2Stop Challenge came to an end at the Leamogetswe Children’s Home in Atteridgeville, Pretoria.

The home was the site of the final CSI challenge of the competition, and doubled as the finish line for the athletes, who had clocked up close to 1,000 kilometres on the road over the course of the week in brutally hot conditions. Every single athlete on the Run2Stop Challenge is a freak of nature capable of enduring prolonged physical torture.

With a three point difference between the teams heading in to the last day, Team Force (my guys) needed to claim wins in the run, cycle, and CSI challenge to square the overall competition up at 8-all. Pierre Spies, Jimmy Tau and I arrived at the Leamogetswe Children’s Home riding on a wave of big talk from the CSI team of Team Edge in Ben Karpinski, Gcobani Bobo and Stanton Fredericks.

Attention ladies: Gcobani’s great with the groms. 

With the clock started, the teams set to task erecting a fence around the home’s vegetable patch, and planting trees. We got the drop on Team Edge by tasking Pierre “Hard Work And Physical Labour Pays Off” Spies with digging the holes for the trees, which he accomplished in all of two minutes. With Pierre free to help, we managed to get our portion of fence up, and take our tally against Team Edge to 5-1 for the entirety of the competition.

Building a fence. Casually.

Actually, I do know my way around a pick-axe.

At this point, news that our cyclists had claimed victory over a dominant cycling duo from Team Edge reached us, and our spirits were buoyed. One result was still on the table, and the points tally stood at 8-7 in favour of Team Edge.

We welcomed our athletes across the finish line…

And waited in anticipation of the result…

And then we got our hearts broken.

Our brave runners lost by a narrow margin, and Team Edge claimed victory with a final tally of 9-7 over Team Force.

Hearty congratulations to Team Edge. You guys pulled off an amazing win, and better than that, you’re all great people. Bear in mind that you’re all obliged to Instagram the heck out of Brazil.

Team Force, the 2013 Run2Stop Challenge was a fantastic adventure that I won’t soon forget. We made wonderful friends, worked our fingers to the bone, and made life a fraction of a percent better for kids who don’t get to cherish very much in their day-to-day life.

And for the first time ever, I suffered Sunday Blues yesterday afternoon.

CLICK HERE to see all the shots from the Run2Stop Challenge.

All pics by Tyson Jopson.