Xterra – Grabouw

Swim – 1,5km
MTB – 27km
Trail Run – 11km (lies, it was 12km, 1km is a lot when you don’t plan for it.)

This was supposed to be my first official big-ish race of the year. I was just short of a month into my new training program, and with a decent 2013 of just keeping general fitness behind me, I was feeling good.
I was focussing hard on my swimming, this was by far my slowest of the 3 disciplines. Because of Lifesaving and Paddling I’ve always been quite a strong swimmer, speed however was never my strong point, it’s just one of those things that unless I’m constantly training it, I just loose my technique and pace so quickly.

In grade 10 and 11 I joined a proper swimming squad for training. My coach had to do a lot of work to get a whole lotta bad habits and ugly technique out of me, and by the end of grade 11 I wasn’t swimming half bad. But as soon as I stopped and now a good 10 years later, I lost any good input I gained in those 2 years completely.

So anyways, come the week before the race and I’m feeling strong and crazy excited. My brand new mountain bike had finally arrived. I had zero cash to afford a new bike, but someone very close to me saw the dream I was starting to dream and decided that He would help me out in getting this year started with the right equipment. Finally I joined my fellow mountain biking mates and their gang of Carbon Hard Tails with my new Rocky Mountain Vertex 950RSL. Thanks to the guys at Trail and Tar for giving me a great deal and setting my bike up perfectly.

Thursday I went to pick up my race number and goodie bag, a pretty kickass goodie bag at that, lotsa cool treats. They really do make it worth the amount you have to cough up for these races.
The excitement was just building up more and more. I had managed to convince 3 of my mates to enter the race as a 3 man team, so there was a bit of friendly rivalry going between us as well.

Then out of nowhere, I woke up friday morning as sick as a dog and with the worst stomach bug as well?
Saturday morning, I woke up feeling even worse and had to start making peace with the fact that I’ll probably have to pull out on Sunday.

I missioned through to grabouw on the Saturday to support a friend taking part in the Xterra Lite, bad idea. As kak as I was feeling, just being in that awesome race atmosphere I couldn’t help but get excited to race, I’d been training hard and just bought a new bike, how can I not race. That Saturday night I went and slept over at my “3 man team” mates house as we decided to do team mission through to Grabouw on Sunday. I tried to get an early night and would make a call in the morning on whether I’ll be racing or just supporting once again.

Sunday morning I woke up feeling even worse than Saturday, not ideal at all. I decided that I would drive through to the race and just watch, packed all my stuff just incase though…So as you can guess, when I got there I obviously couldn’t resist, so I said to myself “fine, you can do the race, but no actual racing, keep the heart low and just have fun, come back next year with something to prove.”

The swim forced me to do just that, with so much flem in my throat I could hardly breathe and I swam a good 8min slower than planned and compared to the training swim I had done the weekend before. I also swam 1.68km instead of 1.5km, woulda been even further if I never realised the pack I was swimming with was going way off course.

Going into the bike leg I was helluva excited to just have fun. My new bikes first official ride and a big Personal Challenge for me out on the bike course. Prior to getting my new bike I’d been a little bit hesitant with some bigger drops and downhills etc. But I always blamed my old bike, so now with new bike and new mind set I had no excuse but to wear a bigger pair and just commit. And I did exactly that, and never have I had so much fun on a bike before. The rock garden, that I would normally hit with such caution, was so much fun and I just felt so relaxed and comfortable on my new Mountain Climbing Machine. I did have a nice big superman fly over my handlebars when hitting a patch of dry sand way too quick. But luckily it was a big enough patch that would also make my landing much softer.

 

Finally going into the last leg, I was warned by a mate that after about 2km’s of running you cross a river and hit a mountain, then you start climbing for daaays. And then when you think you’re at the top, you climb some more, and this little process continued for quite some kilometres. With this bit of knowledge I paced myself from the get go, and even though I wasn’t really racing, our ego’s always get the best of us, so it felt really good as I slowly started passing all those runners who came sprinting past me in the start and had now fallen victim to these crazy hills of death.

 

Apart from feeling like absolute crap on the day, it was actually still a super fun day out in the mountains, doing what I love and exploring new adventures was enough to distract me for a few hours before having the adrenaline wear out and the reality of Sick Boy hitting me again.
What would have probably only been a weekend of sick boy and chilling in bed, had I decided to take it easy and not race or go through at all, had unfortunately now turned into almost 2 weeks of no training and taking it easy. Yeah I learned my lesson, but I still don’t regret doing the race, it was too much fun, and at least now I know what to expect for next year.

Can’t wait to come back in 2015 and really see what I’m capable of when pushing hard.

For now it was chill time, had Cape Argus Cycle tour coming up in 2 weeks time.