Kevin Benkenstein has been raising funds for Qhubeka through his Everesting rides and other challenges for some years. He recently joined the charity in an official capacity. Kevin enjoys tough endurance challenges and often leverages these to promote and raise funds for Qhubeka. We caught up with him to chat about his involvement with Qhubeka, his recent 3000-kilometre ride through Australia, as well as this weekend’s Climbing for Qhubeka fundraising campaign.
You have recently teamed up with Qhubeka. What is your new role at the organisation?
Can you explain a bit about how the charity works and who benefits from it?
You like doing extreme endurance events and activities. How have you managed to pair these activities with promoting Qhubeka’s aims?
The Climbing for Qhubeka campaign will run from 29 September to 1 October. Can you explain what it is and how people can get involved or contribute?
We encourage people to try and push their limits somewhat for this but it is not necessary, most of all we just want to give people an avenue to show their belief in Qhubeka and to express that to the world. Anyone can register for just $10 at www.climbingforqhubeka.org with 100% of proceeds going to the Charity and putting people on bicycles.
Once registered a person can choose to ride, run, walk, hike or even throw a kids party, as my sister is doing – there is no need to do something crazy but we would like to encourage people to do something that they love and give back while doing so. We have even seen people selling t-shirts to raise funds, so the ways to contribute really have been varied.
You recently rode the Race to the Rock: a 3000-kilometre self-supported ultra-endurance race from Albany, Western Australia to Uluru in the Northern Territory. Can you tell us a bit about the experience?
It was an incredible experience to be alone in a foreign country and literally in the middle of nowhere completely by myself. The landscapes were stunning but barren and the towns were far apart, so the sensation of loneliness was very real. Initially, the loneliness was tough to deal with but eventually, you accept it and realise what a gift it is. When it is just you and your bike you really feel the land and see the beauty in it. I loved that I had the opportunity to connect with the country in such a way.
The self-supported aspect was a new challenge and a great learning experience for me too. There were no organized stops and we had to rely completely on ourselves to find resupply points and then carry whatever we needed to make it to the next one. When you have to rely on what is on your bike and your ability to endure for stretches of up to 400km at a time, you learn a lot about what you can do from both a mental and physical standpoint and find new limits. Managing my body, mind, and resources over that distance was a huge challenge and one that I am proud to have succeeded at.
I was also lucky to meet amazingly kind people along the way. From people who would drive past, slow down and ask if I was ok to people in the towns we stopped in helping me with information on what was ahead to people sending messages from all across the world in support of us all. I met and interacted with people from so many different backgrounds during the journey and all were kind and caring, it gives you a little more faith in humanity. That was a great experience, maybe the best part.
What draws you to events that push the limits like that?
How do you prepare for something like this? And how does the challenge compare to your normal training?
For each event, I will do some specificity from a nutrition standpoint though, to ensure that my body is used to the conditions it will need to work under in the event. For Race to the Rock, as an example, I knew water would be scarce and so I had to teach my body to get used to 200-300ml per hour whereas I was a big drinker during rides before. That was a big adjustment.
Overall though the mental preparation is the bigger aspect, as your body will do what your mind allows it to and so I spent a lot of time on that side of things using visualization mostly as I had no experience like what I would encounter to rely on for this event.
How did your body respond to twelve days on the bike, with very little sleep in between? Is this something you can train for?
The lack of sleep is something different to deal with, and when the sleep monsters come at you they come hard. I don’t believe in sleep-deprivation training as I think that looking after your body and getting it into the best shape possible is important pre-event and so it is something that I get better at as I do more events like this. Early on, the minimal sleep really got me, I collapsed in a bush and only just got my Bivvy out before my eyes shut on the second night, but I learnt how to manage it as the race went on. In the end, I realised that I could stave off the sleep monsters with a quick 10-minute roadside nap if it wasn’t the right spot for a proper sleep, but the need for some sleep always existed. I got about 32 hours sleep over the ride, enough I think but in future, I would try to get it in more consistent 3 hour nightly blocks if possible, the all-night riding was rough when I did it.
Give us an idea of your bike setup and the kinds of things you had to pack for the race?
I packed quite a bit into my Burra Burra bags. I took a Bivvy and sleeping bag liner to sleep in, warm clothes and a rain jacket, spares to fix general potential bike issues and then some extra stuff such as a vandal-proof tap head to make sure I could get water from taps without issue and spare cleats, which I thankfully didn’t need. The full pack-list was about 50-60 items.
So what’s next?
Climbing for Qhubeka
The 2017 edition of Qhubeka’s ‘Climbing for Qhubeka’ campaign runs from 29 September to 1 October. For the first time, the campaign will take place globally. Registrations are now open at www.climbingforqhubeka.org.