FEAT South Africa's official bye-bye announcement

About two weeks ago I received a lovely email from FEAT Canada director Sean Verret. He has done incredible things with FEAT Canada over the past six years. In his email Sean said that his FEAT Canada board had met and that they'd decided to end FEAT Canada. I understood completely as I've been struggling with the same dilemma for the past 18 months.

 As the founder of FEAT and creator of the concept, I didn't feel that I could just end FEAT - after all, I created it. Sean's email - and the decision by the board of FEAT Canada - gave me 'permission' to let go of FEAT too. FEAT Canada has just sent out their official announcement  (worth a read).

FEAT is not just a two-hour, one-night event. It takes months of planning and coordination and another whole chunk of months of writing adventure news stories, talking to people and keeping my ear to the ground. Like Sean and his team, organising FEAT meant that I wasn't getting out to do the things that I love. Last year, without having FEAT in October, I got to spend two weeks with my mom walking 320km of the Camino de Santiago route in Spain. I need more of this.

From October 2010 to October 2015 I had the pleasure of hosting 83 speakers on the FEAT stage from seven FEAT events and one FEAT Kids event. There are 75 videos of seven-minute FEAT South Africa talks on the FEAT YouTube channel for you to enjoy. Added to those from FEAT Canada, there are 198 videos of inspiring adventurers that share 75,000 views.

 On-the-day, FEAT came together because of a large team that included MCs, my sound guy (thank you Al - every FEAT event), audio-visual team, volunteers, ushers, photographers, videographers, video editor, sponsors and venue people. My singer-songwriter cousin, Roland Albertson, is the talent behind FEAT's theme tune which comes from his song 'White Wednesday'.

 FEAT - and all of you - have been such a big part of my life since mid-2010. FEAT had its time and now I need mine back. For adventures and to play more.

I am grateful for Sean's email which has given me 'permission' to also let go of FEAT and not to feel obligated to have to keep it going but, as Sean said later in his message to me, to celebrate what we and FEAT have achieved in these years.

 As I officially let go of FEAT, I feel a dash of pride in the event concept that I created and relief that I can say bye-bye now to it too.

 Thank you - speakers, supportive audience, sponsors and volunteers - for being part of this journey.

FEAT Canada's official bye-bye announcement

FEAT Canada has just released their official bye-bye announcement. Sean Verret and his team have been amazing. I'm copying their post below because it really sums up what goes into putting on a FEAT event.

Is it true? 

If you’re reading this, you’ve probably read either an email or social media post that says FEAT Canada and FEAT Kids are saying goodbye. Well what you have read is true and in the text below we’ll do our best to tell our story.

What have we done? 

 Before we say good bye, it’s worth realizing what we’ve created and how many people we’ve impacted. Since our first show in the Fall of 2011 we have hosted 7 adult shows and 4 kids shows. In total we’ve had 98 speakers, 11 sets of performers, and 11 MCs donate their time to help inspire you to get outside and test your limits. To put on those 11 shows our board of directors and over 200 volunteers have put in just over 10,000 hours of their time to entertain over 5000 live guests. Similarly, our online community of followers has reached nearly 5000 people including our newsletter and social media followers while our videos (including FEAT South Africa) have nearly 75,000 views since we started. Add all of those numbers up and we’ve reached nearly 100,000 people in one way or another during our tenure. Long story short, we’ve had impact. We’re extremely proud of this, and this makes it even harder to say goodbye. As Muhammad Ali once said, “Service to others is the rent you pay for your room here on Earth”, so we hope by saying goodbye that our rent cheques don’t bounce in the future…

Can’t we just put on one more show? 

Before we made this release, the most asked question was, “How about just one more show?”. It’s a question we’ve asked ourselves almost every year… One of our favourite FEAT Speakers spoke about the difficulty of getting to the start line and that we should celebrate start lines more than finish lines. We’ve managed to smash through 11 start lines and every single one has had its challenges, but we did it. We did it with an extremely passionate board of directors, a dedicated team of volunteers, and some paid help when everything just got too overwhelming. Many will never know how hard it has been to get to the start line for each of our shows, but in short our shows are a year long endeavour that starts shortly after the end of our last show and ends with the beginning of our next show. We might not be smashing though any more start lines, but we are crossing a finish line today with huge smiles on our faces and a few tears running down our cheeks.

So why are we saying goodbye? 

 Each individual on our board has a variety of reasons of both why we should continue and why we should say good bye. The most compelling dialog, however, is that while we’ve been inspiring others to get outside and do amazing things, we’ve neglected to do some of those things ourselves. Our team has decided, that while it is important to inspire others to be awesome and do amazing things, it is also just as important to live the lives that we attempt to inspire others to live. For that reason, we will no longer continue to put on the FEAT Canada and FEAT Kids events in the future.

Thank you

The last thing we want to say is thank you. We want to thank every single person who has helped us put on our events especially our speakers, performers, volunteers and partners. We want to thank the thousands of people who’ve attended our shows and watched our videos online. We want to thank the thousands of people who’ve interacted with us online and put smiles our our faces. Our tears are big today, but our smiles are even bigger.

Thank you for being a part of the FEAT Canada and FEAT Kids community.

Your FEAT Board of Directors
Sean Verret – Founder and Chair
Tiffany Melius – Vice Chair
Tanya Verret – Treasurer
Jami Savage – Director at Large
Caroline Walter – Secretary

22nd day of running - Hazel's Ten10 Challenge

As I got just over halfway in my annual birthday running challenge, I had one of the most inspiring runs ever.

My friend Hazel Moller is again logging massive miles for her annual Ten10 Challenge. She runs 10 Comrades distances between Johannesburg and Pietermaritzburg over 10 days with the 10th being Comrades itself. This year she has been joined on the road by Tumelo Mokobane, a long-time running friend of Hazel's. He has run a bunch of Comrades, ultras and 100 milers.

Hazel is passionate about animal welfare organisations. Over the past 20 years, as a runner putting in long miles in training, she has picked up countless strays on the road, which she has taken to welfare centres. She has also adopted a bunch of them.

Only two days before starting this Challenge, Hazel came away with grazed hands and knees after trying to catch a greyhound. Its neck was tied with a rope to its one foot and she thinks that it may have escaped from the nearby squatter camp. Greyhounds are used for hunting. Although she didn't manage to catch the poor thing, she says that it was at least heading in the right direction - away from the squatter camp.

Hazel does this incredible ultra-ultra-distance run each year to encourage friends and strangers to donate towards her fund, which goes to animal shelters to buy food and other expenses that these places incur. She values the work that they do and that there are these places to care for abandoned, neglected and abused pets.

We went down to KZN this weekend for work so I missed Hazel coming to Parys on Sunday. She stayed with my friends at Otters Haunt and my mom cooked a big meal for everyone.

Driving home on Tuesday, we met up with Hazel, her husband Chris and Tumelo on the road between Bethlehem and Clarens. Chris knew that I was coming but it was a complete surprise for Hazel. She was sitting on a stool having something to eat when we found them. I thought that she was going to fall off the stool!

She had been having a rough day, struggling with her lungs (she has asthma) and also her stomach (a flare up of an ulcer which affected her badly last year too). I ran a few kilometres with her.

Tumelo was near us and so I got to chat to him a few times. He is nursing a painful ITB inflammation but was still ticking along at a steady pace.

By the time I left Hazel she was in a better space and with only 15km to Clarens, she didn't have too much further (comparatively!) to go for the day.

She woke up with chest pains on Wednesday and went off to a doctor in Harrismith. An issue related to her asthma. It looks like the doctor sorted her out and got her back on the road. It looked like Day 7 went well.

Today is Day 8, Saturday will be Day 9 and Sunday will be their 10th and final run - Comrades itself.

I have known Hazel for very many years (actually, Tumelo too but more in passing from the running store where he worked, some events, and my old neighbourhood and first running club).

I burst with pride to see what Hazel accomplishes with her running - not just Ten10 but dozens of ultras where she excels. I'm crossing my fingers and toes too for Tumelo, that he nails this challenge. He has been going so very well.

On their Ten10 website you can see which route Hazel is on and you can join her for a few kilometres or 20. She welcomes company.

You can also find the details to donate money - by EFT or through GivenGain to PETS.

The fate of FEAT

I'm good at a lot of things but I'm not very good at asking for money. When my wonderful and supportive sponsors of my adventure talks event FEAT went through a tough time in Dec 2015 and into early 2016 with the plummeting exchange rate (they're importers), I just couldn't face looking for new funding. FEAT is an event that doesn't generate enough funding just from ticket sales and so sponsorship is crucial. I also have to take on a bulk of the financial risk of presenting the event personally, with ticket sales only paying out post event. I just couldn't do it and so I decided to cancel FEAT 2016.

More than this, I realised that I was exhausted. Seven FEAT events and one FEAT Kids in five years. On top of Forest Run, Metrogaines, club involvements... just too much.

Putting the FEAT event together takes a good three to four months of my year. Sure, not 100% full-time work, but a considerable portion. That's excluding the time spent throughout the year keeping up with adventure news and writing stories for the FEAT website.

Getting a break from FEAT last year opened up my time and gave me the chance to spend two weeks with my mom walking a section of the Camino de Santiago route. With organising FEAT I spend so much time spent showcasing the adventures of others and no time spent enjoying adventures myself.

So 2016 passed and 2017 arrived and already we're five months of the year down.

In the last 18 months my life has changed considerably. I moved from Jo'burg to the town of Parys, got an instant family, created a new Forest Run, became the Event Director of our local Parys parkrun, am involved with our paddling club and I am establishing a new business - YOLO Colours - in an unfamiliar industry.

I haven't been able to see my way clear to being able to take on the risk of organising FEAT this year and being removed from the rush of Jo'burg, I feel quite out of planning and organising something in Jo'burg, far from my home.

FEAT Canada took place a few weeks ago. The FEAT Canada organiser, Sean Verret, has done wonders with his event. We 'met' when he first contacted me - I think it was shortly after my first FEAT event in October 2010. Sean, also an adventure racer, said that he would be interested in doing something similar in Vancouver, where he lives.

Sean jumped into FEAT and has not only presented high-quality, dynamic and captivating FEAT events, he also created the FEAT Kids version. Sean very much made FEAT his own and brought to it his strong organising skills, experience, passion and love for adventure.

Sean grew his event to bring on a team of people dedicated to tasks like social media, communication, sponsorship, venue liaison, ticketing and such. After 6.5 years Sean has presented seven FEAT events and four FEAT Kids events. Phenomenal!

Last week I received an email from Sean.

Our board of directors met last night and we decided to end FEAT Canada.  It was an extremely hard decision but the long story short is that the amount of time and energy that it takes for us to put on the event is impeding many of us from doing the fun things we like to do and inspire others to do with FEAT.

I can so relate to everything that Sean says. I am grateful for Sean's email which has given me 'permission' to also let go of FEAT and not to feel guilty nor obligated to have to keep it going but, as Sean says later in his message to me, to celebrate what we and FEAT have achieved in these years.

As I let go of FEAT, I feel a dash of pride in the event concept that I created and relief, as a result of Sean's email, that I can say bye-bye to it too.

I do still have some leftover FEAT Headband Buffs. As I type this in the winter chill of my office, I'm wearing one. It is my indispensable winter running-walking-sitting-visiting-doing piece of headwear. It fits right and it is neither too warm nor too cold on my head - even for running.

FEAT bye-bye special of R140 each. I can courier to you for R45 (door-to-door) and a bunch of these will fit into the flyer bag.