Race report 2012 Cross Triathlon World champs Alabama USA

Racing with a cracked elbow = a lot of pain and discomfort, but I needed to give it a try.

At the start of the swim my elbow felt okay and I swam with the front guys up to just before the first buoy. The strapping on my elbow started coming loose and from there on it felt as though someone was hitting me with a 10 pound hammer with each stroke. I went backwards from there. The pain was one thing, but it was also about the fifth time in the past 4 weeks that I was doing a proper swim and not just kicking up and down the pool.

I got out the water quite far back from the leaders and with a slow time. I then spent quite a lot of time at the beginning of the bike putting my feet into my shoes and putting on my elbow brace and gloves.

The first lap of the bike was okay, but I was still losing a lot of time because I was riding like a girl as every little bump caused me pain. Getting out the saddle also hurt like hell, but I did my best to just suck it up and keep on grinding. Conrad Stoltz, again, took huge chunks of time out of me. It is really amazing to see that man move! I try and do it like he said in a tweet recently, “low air, big gear, no fear”, but I have a long way to go.

On to the run and I was hoping that I would feel better. I was really keen to make some time back on the guys, but I was so broken and just had nothing in me after pretty much 4 weeks of minimal training. So I just did my best and hung in to the end.
I ended up in 18th place. It was really not cool to race in so much pain and with so little fitness, but it was still a great racing experience and I took a lot from it.

So does this mean that off-road triathlon is not for me? No way! Although I was extremely disappointed I still had a lot of fun and I plan on coming back next year and making a proper go of it!
Praise God when you race well and praise God when you race badly. So I will keep on praising Him because I know that He is good and I know that He will be good to me no matter what happens.

A big well done to Conrad for his second Cross Triathlon World title and also to Nico Sterk who came 17th . You guys really raced well!
Well done to Carla van Huysteen with a great performance coming 3rd in the elite ladies.
Bradley Weiss “roomy” for winning the u23s
Charne Prinsloo for coming 3rd in the jr womens race
Bradley Schuit for winning the jr men

So for now it’s back in to full training as my elbow allows me and I am so happy to be here in GER Sigmaringen with Robyn. Going to do some good racing and training in the next 4 months living my dream as a pro athlete and part of the dream is that Robs is with me.

Once again I will leave you with the legend’s saying “The Cave Man”

Low Air, Big Gear, No Fear!

Race Report on the SASOL CROSS TRIATHLON

Last weekend I raced that Sasol Cross Triathlon out in Abramsrust, Sasolburg.
The morning of the race I woke up to pouring rain. It was absolutely bucketing! Carla van Huysteen picked Robyn and me up and it was such a mission to try and load the car when it felt like we were standing under a waterfall. So much rain did not bode well for a triathlon and we were worried that they might make it into a duathlon.

Luckily the venue was so far away that we actually drove out of the rain and it was not raining in Abramsrust although it had and it was very wet there. The sky also looked ominous. An off road tri was going to be a huge amount of fun with so much mud!

I got my transition area sorted out with the bike that I was borrowing for the race. A dual suspension Specialized SWorks. Wow, what a nice bike! A big thanks to my friend Ryno.
I seriously confused all the other athletes when I put on my wetsuit and went down to the swim of a non wetsuit legal race. But, I was only going to warm up in it so that I didn’t get too cold between my warm up and the start of the race.

The distances were: 600m swim, 20km bike and a 6km cross country run. It was going to be a hard, fast race with a lot of mud to make things interesting.
After much persuasion from the referees trying to get us behind the start buoys the gun went off and the sprint got under way. I led the race until the first buoy when Rudolf and Chris joined me. We all exited the water together and raced to T1 where Chris entertained everyone by slipping on the wet grass and falling and then not remembering where he racked.

I chased Rudolf out of transition and passed him on a technical section, but then unfortunately I took a wrong turn and when I got back onto the correct route again I was behind Rudolf. We fought through some hectic mud and got to a grassy section where Rudolf made a bit of a gap on me. I came into transition about 1min30 down and went out onto the cross country route. It was very slippery and my racers were not ideal for the course. Oh well, I finished in second place and I had a ton of fun! Well done to Rudolf.

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