Mom and sons’ racing team gives new meaning to family time

MIRAH LANGER

After all, in this clan, mom, Carin Goldblatt, 58, and her three sons, Guy, 29, Daniel, 27, and Jonathan, 25, are competing as a team in the multidisciplinary endurance event, Expedition Africa, on the island of Rodrigues in Mauritius.

“It’s unusual to have a family participate in adventure racing. I don’t think there’s ever been a team of three sons and a mother,” said Mark Goldblatt, the proud South African-born husband and father of the dynamic adventurers. He is at home working while they are navigating the 320km route.

The family, one of 60 teams in this race, has to navigate from point to point on the course using a variety of disciplines. These include mountain biking, trekking, kayaking, paddling, snorkelling, swimming, ropework, sailing, and orienteering. Each team has to decide how to pace itself, making its own decisions about when and where to rest. Every team has to include at least one woman to qualify.

The race opened last Sunday, and its closing ceremony will be held this Sunday. Until then, the family back home doesn’t have direct contact with the team, but is able to track its progress via a satellite tracking device on the expedition website.

In fact, The Riders of the Last Ark, as the Goldblatt participants have named the team, have become so well known, they were mentioned by Kinetic Events Africa, the South African organisation which runs the expedition, in publicity for the event.

“The team is in good spirits, and mom is loving her ‘family time’,” posted the organisers on their Facebook page, along with a series of photographs of the team looking calm and collected as they followed the trail.

Some of the team’s keenest fans besides Mark, are his and Carin’s daughter – a fitness instructor in the Israeli army paratroopers – who is travelling in China. Also following the team’s progress are Mark’s parents, Dr Hymie and Micky Goldblatt, who made aliyah from South Africa with Mark and their three other children in 1968. Now 96 and 93 respectively, they too are eager to hear the latest results of their bold brood.

Goldblatt, who met Carin at university, said his wife’s love of adventure sport began with a kiddies and parent race nearly two decades ago.

“At the time, I was busy in the army in the intelligence services. One day, my wife comes to me and says the children need to participate in some kind of race, and I need to run with them. I said to her she should run with them,” said Mark, joking that he considered himself too “macho” since he was in the army at the time.

“She said she would. She started running at the age of 40, and hasn’t stopped.”

Carin, who is originally from the United Kingdom and made aliyah on her own, has since gone on to participate in ultra-marathons and an Iron Woman. She brought off-road running to Israel, and runs with the blind.

“You name it, she’s done it,” Goldblatt said.

It’s a path Carin has inspired all her children to follow, with all four having completed marathons.

As a family, the Goldblatts also took all the children out of school for a year when they were teenagers. They spent a year backpacking around Asia, Australia, and New Zealand, instilling a love of adventure.

While Carin has competed in a number of endurance-sport expeditions, this is the first time she is doing so with her sons.

Asked what inspired the boys to join their mother this time, Goldblatt quipped that it was “because she tells them that she is better [than them]”.

On a more serious note, he said that while they were an athletic family, Carin was the key inspiration.

“My sons were all in elite units in the Israeli army. One is still in service. They are much better navigators than probably 99% of the participants in the race. However, they aren’t in the same league, in terms of being as fit as my wife is, in terms of endurance!”

He said they weren’t aiming to win in the event.

“The big thing is to complete it, not to get injured, and to stay a family at the end of the day.” In addition, the family was honoured to represent their country.

“We like to represent Israel. We like to carry the flag. We don’t have to hide it. We are a proudly Zionistic family.”