MUCH GIVEN. MUCH EXPECTED.

I am writing this on Friday morning at Storms River, after walking the Otter Trail, after yesterday’s Otter Challenge and the day before the Otter Race — all part of the Otter TERREX Trail presented by EasyEquities.

       

I am sitting on a balcony, overlooking the ocean as the weather starts to turn chilly and misty, with a fine drizzle falling.

My body is a little tired. My head is considerably clearer.

And I am grateful.

Very, very grateful.

There is a line I grew up with through my St Stithians College Methodist background, although its source is the Gospel of Luke:

“To whom much is given, much is expected.”

I have quoted it often.

This week, somewhere between the Indian Ocean, ancient forest, river crossings, tired legs, thunder, friends, runners and a rather good few glasses of wine, I thought about it differently.

Much has been given to me.

That carries an obligation to give back. I believe that deeply and I know I can do more.

But there is another gift we all received before any of the others.

Life.

And perhaps much more should be expected of us in the way we use it.

A trail that keeps teaching

This was my sixth time walking the Otter.

It remains one of the most beautiful places I know anywhere in the world.

SANParks describes the normal Otter as a five-day hike along the Tsitsikamma coastline from Storms River Mouth to Nature’s Valley. Forest gives way to rock, rivers tumble into the Indian Ocean and the trail climbs and falls relentlessly between coastline and plateau.

It is wild enough to remind you who is in charge (hint: not any one human).

The Cape clawless otter that gives the trail its name is shy and elusive. Dolphins play in the breakers. Southern right whales visit these waters. Blue duiker hide in the forest and African black oystercatchers work the shoreline.

Ancient trees build a glorious forest.

You walk through their world.

Not the other way around.

There is something healthy about that.

Gerard Manley Hopkins asked:

“What would the world be, once bereft
Of wet and of wildness?”

After a few days on the Otter, the answer feels obvious.

Poorer.

Much poorer.

SANParks has done something important here. Access does not mean absence of rules. Quite the opposite.

The ordinary trail is deliberately controlled. There are only twelve beds at each overnight stop. On most days of the year this extraordinary coastline belongs to a tiny number of hikers at a time.

Then, for one week, SANParks permits something completely different: around 600 runners to move through the full trail at race pace.

Access and stewardship can live together.

Actually, they have to.

That idea matters well beyond conservation.

Opening investing to millions more South Africans — as EasyEquities has done — comes with responsibility too.

Access cannot simply mean opening the gate and shouting, “Good luck.”

It means education. Tools. Appropriate products. Information. Encouraging good habits via Thrive. Helping people understand that ownership comes with responsibility.

On the Otter it means respecting the trail, obeying the rules and leaving this place better than you found it.

With investing it means start, learn, diversify, be patient, keep showing up and do the work.

Freedom and responsibility.

Much given.

Much expected.

Three days instead of five

As part of EasyEquities’ partnership with the Otter, each year we get the extraordinary privilege of taking a small group onto the trail before race week.

It is a mixture of EasyEquities team mates, clients, partners and CN&CO mates.

And “privilege” is the correct word.

We do the trail in roughly three days rather than the usual five — about 12km, 8km and then a monster final day of around 22km.

We also cheat.

A little.

We carry day packs while our heavier bags are moved ahead.

I am completely unashamed about this.

Partly it allows us to cover the distance. Partly it makes the experience accessible to people who might otherwise not do it — while staying hard. And importantly it creates work and economic participation for people from communities around the park.

Marco Barnardo coordinates much of this world for us behind the scenes, with CN&CO partner and long-time friend Blake Dyason taking on the very important job of guiding our group.

Marco spent years as a SANParks ranger and has become one of the quiet constants of the Otter. He understands this coastline at a level most of us never will and plays a central role in the safety of race week.

He is calm.

Knowledgeable.

Capable.

And, more importantly, a really good human.

Murray and Lourika Pienaar produce meals along this trail that have absolutely no business being as good as they are in a camp setting — jazzed up with fairy lights and more.

This year one of our dinners was at Oakhurst Hut.

Oakhurst is genuinely one of my favourite places on earth.

We had walked all day.

We ate superb food.

There was wine.

And then the sky exploded.

Thunder rolled across the coast. Lightning tore through the darkness. Rain came down around us while the ocean crashed somewhere below.

No reception.

No emails.

No scrolling.

No immediate access to whatever somebody somewhere had decided was urgently important.

Just weather.

Friends.

Food.

Wine.

Conversation.

Your own thoughts.

It was spectacular.

Rhythm

Pierre Jordaan is another of the people who makes the Otter possible.

He is an exceptional trail runner and also part of the safety operation behind the event — the largely invisible system of route markings, communications, marshals, river crossings and judgement calls that allows hundreds of people to test themselves, safely, in a genuinely wild environment.

Shaun Keeling interviewed Pierre a while back, and Pierre said something again this week that has stayed with me.

Every trail has a rhythm.

You just have to find it.

And know that it changes.

That is so true.

You cannot bully a technical trail into becoming a road.

Sometimes you climb.

Sometimes you descend.

Sometimes you can move quickly.

Sometimes you have to stop.

Sometimes you need somebody’s hand.

Sometimes you are the person giving the hand.

And sometimes you simply need to shut up and listen.

To the forest.

To the sea.

To the person next to you.

To yourself.

I arrived at Otter carrying a little more than my backpack.

I have had some difficult days at work recently involving people and decisions where being fair matters enormously.

I have prayed a lot about whether I am doing the right thing.

I have analysed various options.

The irritating thing about genuinely wanting to do the right thing is that it does not always feel good.

And believing yourself to be a decent person does not automatically make every decision you take a decent one.

That requires examination.

Listening.

Admitting mistakes.

Apologising when necessary.

Changing direction when necessary.

But also continuing when, after proper thought and advice, you believe the course is right.

A trail does not remove complicated things from your life.

It can give you enough silence to see them more clearly.

We all make mistakes.

We can all do better.

We should expect more from ourselves and, I think, lovingly expect more from one another too.

But we also need to acknowledge the distance already travelled.

Then keep walking.

Heritage Day

Yesterday was Heritage Day.

I cannot imagine many better places to have spent it.

The Challenge runners started in mist and wet conditions, tackling the Retto — this year’s reverse direction of the Otter.

The direction changes each year.

The Classic follows the traditional hiking route from Storms River to Nature’s Valley.

The Retto does exactly what its name suggests: Otter backwards, from Nature’s Valley to Storms River.

A delightfully South African piece of logic.

The Challenge and Race use the same trail and essentially the same event infrastructure.

The difference is the clock.

Challenge athletes have 11 hours.

Race athletes have nine and race for the major prize money.

For the Challenge this year we had nearly 300 runners from more than a dozen countries.

That is tiny compared with the number of people who would like to participate.

And that is part of the magic.

Some things are valuable precisely because access has to be limited.

Which brings me, unexpectedly, to Comrades.

Another start line

While we were celebrating Heritage Day here, the results of the ballot for the 100th Comrades Marathon were also being communicated — a process led by Comrades Race Director Sue Forge and the team at Comrades House, Alain, Jared and many others.

The demand for the centenary race hugely exceeds what can safely and responsibly be accommodated.

That is a wonderful problem.

But still a problem.

Comrades created separate early windows for Green and Yellow Number holders, charity entries and CMA members before opening the remaining opportunity through a general ballot.

No system will make everybody happy when demand exceeds supply.

But a ballot recognises something important: wanting something badly does not automatically give any one of us a greater right to it than somebody else.

There are safety constraints.

Logistical constraints.

Environmental constraints.

And the obligation of an organisation is to design the fairest process it can within those realities.

The Otter knows this too.

Only around 300 places are available for each of the Challenge and Race and entries are notoriously sought after.

I celebrate that demand.

I celebrate thousands of people wanting to run Comrades.

I celebrate hundreds wanting to take on Otter.

People choosing difficult things.

People choosing life.

On Heritage Day especially, I found myself thinking about how fiercely proud I am of this country.

Of its people.

Its landscapes.

Its ridiculous energy.

Its diversity.

Its possibility.

And also, infuriatingly, how bloody far short of our potential we still fall.

We should not pretend otherwise.

Our diversity becomes valuable when we make something with it. When difference stops being merely something we catalogue and becomes something we harness towards shared success.

South Africa has been given much.

Much is expected of us.

We need to deliver.

The people

The great lie of endurance sport is that it is an individual pursuit.

Look closely at any finish line.

Nobody gets there alone.

There are partners who tolerated the training.

Parents.

Children.

Friends.

Coaches.

Physios.

Volunteers.

Marshals.

Medical teams.

People filling water.

People carrying bags.

People putting up infrastructure at stupid hours.

People standing in rain while somebody else gets photographed crossing the line.

Sponsors.

Organisers.

SANParks rangers.

Safety teams.

People making food.

People clapping for a stranger.

Otter is a community.

Some of the faces cross that finish line year after year.

Others arrive for the first time.

I have previously been slightly embarrassed by the Otter team including me in their “legends” storytelling.

Because I don’t think I am one.

The Otter is the legend.

The route is.

The athletes are.

Marco and Pierre and the marshals are.

The people who build the village and then dismantle it are.

Rikus Kok and I simply somehow acquired the tradition of standing at the finish line and handing out medals.

It began because, as sponsors, we were asked to hand out some medals.

We decided every finisher deserved one handed to them with the same respect.

So we stayed.

The Otter team wrote about that earlier this year and I still think their description gives me too much credit.

But I understand why the ritual matters.

Because a medal says:

I saw what you did.

And the Jack Black beer we open together on the finish line says:

Congrats.

You’ve earned it.

Andrea. Vanessa. Dingimuzi. Brad. Shaun. And many others.

There are too many EasyEquities people, clients and partners involved to name everybody.

Which is a very good problem.

Running is part of our community.

Years ago, EasyEquities reported that more than half of Otter entrants were already EasyEquities investors.

That overlap makes sense to me.

Both communities attract people willing to exchange immediate comfort for something they value later.

A few deserve a shoutout this year.

Andrea Copland, who leads Data and Business Intelligence at EasyEquities, took on her fifth Otter.

In Wednesday’s wet Prologue she was already fourth-fastest woman.

Yesterday she smashed the Challenge in under seven and a half hours and finished among the top 10 women.

Andrea is formidable.

Quietly so.

Vanessa Van Dyk — sister-in-law to our CFO Gary — was second masters woman.

She also turned up at prize giving looking impossibly glamorous, which seems unfair after spending a day attacking one of the hardest trails in the country.

Hard as nails on the mountain.

Glam afterwards.

A useful reminder that humans are allowed to contain multitudes.

Dingimuzi Ndlovu from our legal team ran.

And on Saturday members of our Partnerships team, including Shaun Keeling and Brad Leather, will run.

Shaun is an Olympic silver medallist.

As is Lawrence Brittain, another friend of the EasyEquities and Otter family.

There are quite a few Olympians — and spouses of Olympians — floating around this strange little community.

So lekker.

And then our Barker Insurance friends.

Proper CN&CO mates.

They understand something I have always admired: work hard, compete hard, love your people hard and suck the marrow out of life.

Family matters to them.

Friendship matters.

Showing up matters.

Those are my kind of people.

The bloke with the beer

Then there was Johan.

I am deliberately telling this story because human beings are ridiculous judges of other human beings.

Johan does not look like your Instagram algorithm’s idea of an elite endurance athlete.

Let’s just say he is not thin.

At all.

(Picture me!)

He finished in under ten hours.

Rikus handed him a beer.

He downed it.

Then he asked for the microphone.

And announced something roughly along the lines of:

“The okes with the six packs? They’re still coming!”

Perfect.

Never judge the engine by the bodywork.

Mind matters.

Grit matters.

Determination matters.

Expect more from yourself than the people looking at you expect from you.

Graeme

My friend Graeme Codrington ran the Otter two years ago.

He finished.

But after the cut-off.

Around 11 hours 27 minutes.

Yesterday he came back.

This time he finished in a little over ten hours.

That on its own would be a wonderful story about persistence.

But Graeme carried a photograph of his late daughter Rebecca with him.

At the finish, with his wife Jane, there were hugs.

And tears.

Grief and joy occupying exactly the same space.

As they so often do.

You do not “move on” from people you love.

You carry them differently.

Yesterday Graeme literally carried Rebecca along the Otter Trail.

I felt enormously privileged to be there when he came home.

Catherine

Earlier that morning, after the runners had disappeared and the mist was starting to lift, I met an older couple.

Seventies perhaps.

Old school, in the best possible sense.

I asked who they were supporting.

Their daughter.

She had attempted the Otter before.

She hadn’t finished.

And now she had come back.

There is courage in starting.

There is another type of courage in returning to the place where it went wrong.

We spoke for a while.

I told them I would see them at the finish.

And that when their daughter arrived, they must come and find me and they could give her the medal.

As the hours went on, we watched the clock.

And worried.

Then Catherine appeared.

With only a few minutes to spare.

She had done it.

Her parents later thanked me for giving them hope.

Catherine thanked me that evening too for chatting to her folks.

But I had done nothing.

She did the running.

They did the loving and supporting.

And then I thought that perhaps I was missing the point.

Sometimes doing “nothing” except telling another person that you believe there is still a possibility is not nothing.

Hope has value.

So if that is all you have to give somebody on a particular day, give it.

Why EasyEquities is here

Sponsorship can become horribly self-congratulatory.

Logo.

Photograph.

Press release.

Hospitality.

Invoice.

Done.

That interests EasyEquities very little.

We want partnerships where the organisations genuinely enter one another’s worlds.

EasyEquities has now been part of this community for years.

And we are deeply grateful for that honour.

We help fund the event.

We support athletes.

We invest the prize money.

Our people run.

Our clients run.

Our partners run.

We hike.

We stand at the finish.

We tell stories.

And — importantly — we keep asking whether the relationship leaves something useful behind.

One answer sits in some data we looked at before this year’s race.

Since 2021, prize money for 18 Otter athletes has been paid into EasyEquities accounts.

The original prize money totals nearly R700 000.

Those accounts are today worth more than R2 million.

Every one of the 18 remains an active EasyEquities client.

Nearly four rand in every five of the original prize money was invested within days of arriving.

Eight of the athletes subsequently started adding their own money too — more than R1.2 million between them.

Some have withdrawn money along the way.

That is what investments are for too: building capital you can use when life requires it.

That makes me happier than any logo at a finish line.

Because professional sport has a cliff edge.

Careers end.

Injuries happen.

Prize money stops.

Athletes deserve the opportunity to build something while the earning window is open.

Our Otter prize structure deliberately includes an investment component.

The point isn’t to tell an athlete what to do with their money.

It is to introduce another possibility.

You trained for years to build this body.

What are you building for the person who will live in it when the racing is over?

I think that is sponsorship with a little more consequence.

Keep going

At the 2026 Comrades I had the privilege of welcoming nearly every runner across the finish line.

This week Rikus and I get to do it again, on a smaller scale, at Otter.

Different race.

Different distance.

Different terrain.

Same emotions.

Human beings discovering what happens if they keep going.

Not everybody will achieve the time they wanted.

Some won’t finish.

Some will have the race of their lives.

A few will stand on podiums.

Most won’t.

Yet every one of them will have asked something of themselves.

That matters.

Tomorrow the Race runners go.

Nine hours.

Forty-odd kilometres of roots, rock, forest, rivers, climbing, descending and the Indian Ocean keeping watch.

Some will fly.

Some will fight.

All of them will need to find the rhythm Pierre talks about.

To every athlete: congratulations for getting to the start.

To every organiser, ranger, marshal, volunteer, medic, photographer, caterer, supporter, sponsor, partner, family member and friend: thank you.

To SANParks: thank you for protecting this extraordinary place while finding intelligent ways for people to experience it.

Protection without access can create distance.

Access without responsibility destroys the thing people came to experience.

We need both.

To my fellow EasyEquities team mates, clients and partners: thank you for letting us become part of your stories.

And to the Race runners tomorrow:

Rikus and I will be at the finish.

Your medal and beer will be waiting.

There is a lot of trail between you and us.

Listen for its rhythm.

Use what you have been given.

Expect something of yourself.

And keep going.

Much has been given.

Much is expected.

And I know that much will be delivered.