Keep it Real

ARMAND DU PLESSIS is an international adventurer inspired by his endurance runner mother.

- HELEEN MILLS

On his travels around SA and the rest of the world, he has had some jawdropping experiences. These are just a few he chose to share with us...

Not quite a fairytale

I’ve definitely started gravitating towards off-the-beaten-path runs over the years. Running a few kilometres exhausts me, so I found that finding events where there’s a bit of scrambling up and tumbling down was a great way to hide my lack of running skills...

An event that’s got a special place in my heart is the Ultra Fiord: An epic journey into the magical world of fiords....

The tagline makes it sound like something you do in fairyland on a Saturday morning. A jolly little jaunt across beautiful scenery with birds chirping and frolicking huemul deer on green grassy fields.

Don’t be fooled, this is nothing like that. This is a fairyland with impaled heads, glaciers, crevasses, deep mud, freezing river crossings, extreme weather and everything else that Patagonia’s extreme south can throw at you. This is fairyland on difficulty level 11... with the cheat codes disabled.

The 2016 edition of the Ultra Fiord is probably one year that really sticks out for me. It was the second running of the event, the first year I ran it, and the weather was typical of the Chilean Antarctic region. Extremely unpredictable.

I prefer running in the cold, but coming from sunny South Africa, this was pretty new.