Ryan 1 KRA 0 (aka Kick Ryan’s Ass)

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There may have been blood, tears and broken friendships on the cards for yesterdays head to head between KRA and myself but that simply wasn’t the case. I felt the presence of the competition early on as Calum swam on my feet for the first part of the swim but that didn’t last too long. Instead for me, my eyes were set on the swimmer who was trying to get away. I charged hard after the first buoy and managed to get onto his feet but that didn’t last too long as he slowly crept away. Fortunately for me, it was a 2 lap swim which allowed me to sprint around the Land Rover, complete 3 big effort dolphin dives and a quick sprint and I was back on. No easy task if you look at the gap he had on me in the photo. So I was back in the draft zone were I could relax a bit and allow the fish man to pull me away from the competition chasing behind. As we made our way to the second last buoy I noticed that we were actually not making our way to the first buoy, but instead headed for the shore. I figured he’d realise and change course but after a few more meters I changed course to take the shortest line to the buoy. A good plan at the time but after a few more strokes he did indeed notice meaning that we were swimming parallel to each other but about 10m apart. I could see him slowly drifting ahead and so surged everything I had in me to get to the buoy with but but he had broken the elastic and had left me behind. I did come out the water behind him but I had put the hurt into the guys behind getting out of transition before seeing any of the other big guns.

About a third of the way through the lap I saw two figures chasing me down. Knowing the likes of Justin Porteous, Ty White and Daniel Carleton are a bit stronger than me on the bike at the moment, I took the opportunity to get some juice in and settle the heart rate knowing I’d need to make a big surge to get on their wheels. This seemed to work as I managed the necessary jump in pace to get  Ty’s wheels just after he had moved ahead of Downhill World Champ Greg Minaar (who was riding in a team). For the rest of the lap Ty and I worked quite nicely together which was a great confidence boost for me as he normally breezes straight by. Up the big hill on lap 2 though Ty moved off the front and I left to hold off the chasers on my own.

Ty and I about to start lap 2

Hitting the run in 2nd, its was only a matter of time before Justin and Daniel would catch me after my lack of running training. Justin got me on the first lap and Daniel on the second. So 4th would be my end result. I would normally have been disappointed with that but these 3 guys are all in great shape and were 4th, 6th and 8th at SA Xterra champs only a week before. Positives for me were seeing improvements in all 3 disciplines and as I said on my facebook status…more importantly, I come out of this race 100% injury free!

We now have three weeks till the next Mudman which will be at Midmar Dam…I hope to see you all there!

Running into finish