What race are you running?Running the race with endurance

addo elephant trail run 44 km – 16 March 2019
Joseph Beattie
Trail Running
Most special moments cannot be orchestrated. Such a moment was had on this well-known Ultra Trail run in the Eastern Cape of South Africa – the addo elephant trail run. A faint humming sound was heard coming from behind me, and got louder as the sound caught up with and surrounded me – thousands of wild bees, covering a moving area of around 10 met...
Trailblazer for Life
Super User
Reflections
This new look website via this Tale in your inbox only scratches the surface. No website, Tale post, mural, café interior, photo, art, writing, coffee, product, mountain top, trail, run or podcast can capture true adventure, true Life. Its impossible, simply because we cannot live each other’s lives. Yet, in one way we can. This Tale provides a bit...
treading lightly
Super User
Reflections
Trail Running requires adaptation to the terrain one runs on. This terrain usually varies quite substantially within a short space of time. This is true of life too. Yet, sometimes no matter how one tries to adapt, one can feel out of control. GR20 long distance hiking trail, Corsica, France. Needing to back track and retrieve my one glove, I ran t...
Untold Ultra – Fish River Canyon 100 km
Joseph Beattie
Reflections
Like water having carved the deep Fish River Canyon in the arid Namibian landscape – the second largest of its kind in the world, so have the memories in my mind of running its length on 22 June 2013. This website did not exist then, and now not being able to run due to injury these past few months has enabled some deep reflection and a reminder to...
flowers numbered – Steenbok Day Trail
Joseph Beattie
Day Walks
Like a colourful blanket, countless flowers display their collective grandeur spread over hectors of the north-western peninsula of the Postberg section of the West Coast National Park. Made up of brilliant individual variations of its kinds, these flowers make way to an incredible witness of another side to Creation. In contrast to the myriad of f...
printer barista
Joseph Beattie
Coffee
“What do you do?” is a common question one asks when one meets someone for the first time. My answer to these types of questions usually depends on one’s knowledge or appreciation of what it means to be a tradesman. Printing and brewing coffee are extremely similar – two trades I have been privileged to learn and glean from in my journey. This Tale...
Grootvadersbosch low-down – 8 July 2018
Joseph Beattie
Tracks
The photographs we post are untouched and unedited. Yet they are still limited. Limited because even edited photographs are unable to tell the true Tales behind them. Every one of us has Tales behind us to be told, yet how edited are they? This Tale is posted during a particular low-down for Joseph. Unable to run due to an injury, Lisa enjoys the s...
Run Wind Park
Joseph Beattie
Tracks
We do not know where wind comes from, yet stewarding its effect principally brings about our fascination. Using what we have, whatever that might be – even the ability to just run together however that might look, is what this Tale is about. The Yzerfontein parkrun highlighted this simple privileged reality. “The wind blows where it wishes, an...
Ocean2Ocean 50 km Trail Run – 28 April 2018
Joseph Beattie
Tracks
One of the best things for us when we run trails is the awareness of the realness of our lives. The Two Oceans is a popular run in Cape Town, yet the Ocean2Ocean was previously known as the real 2 Oceans! Perhaps because it’s a trail run that traverses over Table Mountain instead around it. Maybe. Maybe, because comparisons are a curse in that we d...
Journal: Jesus Trail
Joseph Beattie
Hiking
Consider yourself privileged if you are reading this. That’s how we felt traversing the foothills in the footprints of Jesus. Perceptions we had about the land going into this trail were soon changed. We could only but be silenced by this experience as we made our way along this route of Jesus from his hometown Nazareth, to Capernaum, his main area...
Cape Town Cycle Tour 109 km via BMX – 11 March 2018
Joseph Beattie
Cycling
58 kilometres per hour/36 miles per hour. That was my top speed while traversing the 109 km Cape Town Cycle Tour on a single speed BMX. Like trail running, I just feel really good and free riding a BMX. It’s simply fun, and I could not resist riding the world’s largest timed cycle race without anything else. This Tale depicts these highs and some l...
Coffee, science?
Joseph Beattie
Coffee
Some of our supporters of relational artisan coffee think coffee is the second most traded commodity in the world after oil. Not all things are seemingly what they seem to be simply because no matter which way we look at that thing, numbers, facts and figures cannot and do not tell the full story. Is it science? There’s more to a cup...