Fitness enthusiasts, runners and adventurous Joburgers came out in their numbers and took advantage of the cool Sunday morning breeze as they took part in the Joburg edition of the Jump City Challenge on 4 March.
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The streets of Jozi played host to the Jump City Urban Challenge, an adventurous run that takes participants through some of Joburg’s most popular and coolest landmarks.
Participants had the opportunity to take part in the 7km and 10km runs. However, there was a difference between the 7km and 10km. The 7km was just a fun run with no obstacles on the way while the 10km was littered with exciting challenges for all levels of athletes.
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The 2018 edition was significantly different to previous years as athletes were taken from Constitution Hill to Mad Giant – with an increased amount of challenges and features en route. The challenge began at The Old Fort and Prison where athletes covered 1km inside the prison yards before heading through Braamfontein which had a total of six obstacles designed to keep the flow of the race as it got tougher.
From Braamfontein, athletes crossed over Nelson Mandela Bridge, which marked the start of the Newtown section which was literally action packed all the way to the finish. Here athletes ran through 1,2km of Museum Africa, The Dance Factory, The Old Potato Mill, Mary Fitzgerald Square, Newtown Park, 2,2km inside Sci-Bono and 500m through the JDA before they hit the final straight.
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The Newtown area featured the following obstacles:
- Peri Pole Cat, a 9m long side crawl made for various heights
- Peri Rat Race, 45m of scaffold ups and overs
- Peri Monkey Bars, 10m long monkey bars
- Vitaforce Grip It, 4,8m long walls with holes in which you will need to navigate sideways as if you were on a climbing wall
- Core Rings Snakes and Ladders, the oldest challenge en route which takes you four stories up the outside of a building to the roof
- The real Mad Giant, an 8m high wall climb up a rope which leads you straight to the finish line.
Jump City also threw in their signature challenges:
- Total Blackout, 400m of complete darkness from four stories underground along a rope
- Lung Buster, a somewhat shorter than normal series of crawls and runs that bust the lungs.
The Jump City challenge certainly changed the cool and calm of Sunday mornings into a jam-packed and adrenaline pumping way to end off the week – making runs through Jozi streets something to add onto Joburger’s bucket lists.
