Posts tagged 2011

Ok, so I might be on a major caffeine high, but who cares, why not ride the high and get the fingers tapping away at the keyboard while my brain is on over drive.

So 2011, not exactly the dream start like I had in 2010 but quite rightly so. I’d usually have a solid 2 and a half months of training soaked up in my legs, driven with high motivation to punish the body having just come out of those dreaded yearly November exams. This time, a month of feet up, drinking beer and eating what I wanted mixed with a bit of coaching and bits and pieces was the order of the month. Granted, I did do some epic cycling in December, but besides the DTCC and our epic unsupported tour, running and swimming was a no go and up until about 2 weeks before Xterra Buffelspoort this was much the same approach.

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I have however, punched out three race appearances in 2011. Amazing to think how quickly the time has flown. The first being the Totalsports Challenge in Cape Town. Now in 2010 I made the trip down with a friend of mine, Gordon Roberts who kindly (read: stupidly) agreed to help me with the 40 hours of driving there and back as well and get up an hour before me on race day (this being about 3.30am) and then still had to run around behind me picking up all my gear which he had neatly set up for me, only for me to happily throw it all on the ground every few kilometers. Shame, he must have pictured things quite differently when I asked him to join me on an all expenses paid trip to Cape Town, driving through the infamous Garden Route on a boys weekend…joke was on him right? So anyway, back to 2011. Having just some riding miles in the legs, we started off on the Terra Firma event.  This year I had chosen to leave the boats behind and stick to the land-only event (Terra Firma). The first leg was the 50km bike. Life was good, I was happily in the bunch and when it split up the big climb near Rooi Els I managed to stay at the front end of the race (barely -  I will add that) so we were left with about 10 of us riding into the wind with the other 60 odd pissed off athletes, who had not made it up the hill with us, chasing like mad men. The break away comprising mostly of individuals, needless to say were caught not too far down the road when the team boys drove the chase pack back to us knowing they could just enjoy the rest of their day once they had finished the bike. For the rest of us though we slipped into our shoes and ran off down the road.

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The 12km was on fairly flat road but on an insanely hot day this was no easy task. I lost a few places in the run and was well relieved to hit the mountain bike leg. A couple km’s in I was making up ground passing a good 5 riders in the first 5km. Things then settled, disrupted only by a few team guys passing me who obviously had weak team mates. Off the MTB we then hit the final leg, 9km of the most heart breaking beach running I’ve ever done. The race gods had been kind however as the tide was at a much better level that 2010 allowing for an easier run on the fairly level more compact sand near the water end…as opposed to the soft off camber stuff we had to run on last year. 8^th overall with Justin two places ahead, Urban Ninja (Raoul De Jongh) one place in front and Warrior Andre Booyens not far behind me. So another Totalsports Challenge down and the South African season was off…

(More blog catching up coming tomorrow…stay tuned)