BSG Energade Big Bay

The final of the BSG Energade Series was held in Cape town, to be exact Big Bay. It was always going to be an unforeseen, hard race with the elements working against us, the cold sea and usually the very strong wind.

I arrived in Cape Town at 11:30, but … my bicycle was still in Johannesburg. The airport personnel promised to deliver my bike within 2 hours in Big Bay, as it was on the next flight. Needless to say, that promise wasn’t kept … my bike only arrived at 22:00. Yes, I did to panic, but luckily all worked out perfect.

I woke up on Sunday morning and the wind seemed calm, but only until I cycled to the venue about 2km from our guest house. The wind was pumping… I was playing with the thought whether I should do a swim warm-up (actually cool down in the freezing Atlantic ocean). Wian managed to talk me into a warm-up. It seemed as if my face was on fire for the first 4 min, I thought I was going to lose my nose - haha.

When the race started, the cold water didn’t affect me as much as I was swimming as fast as I could - not only to keep up with the rest, but also to get out of the water as soon as possible. I managed to catch a wave on the way out … yes, fun in racing as well.


Theo, Rudolf, Erhardt

 On the cycle we were one big pack of about 12 athletes, but a split came at about 4km with 3 athletes going down the road. We chased them down, and once we caught them everybody was lazy and sat up ..… all waiting for the run.

I had a good T2 and was out 6th, I felt good on the run and in the beginning went hard to see what will happen, but at the 2km mark 3 guys came flying past me, they had better legs on the day than I did. But luckily I caught one of them and ended 7th overall.

It was a good and long series, but I had fun and made some new friends. I managed to win the overall Junior Series. Thank you to all my sponsors (TUKS, ORCA, NIKE, CycleOps, FELT, WHASP) for supporting me during the series.

Junior Series podium

Thank you BSG, Energade and Spectrum Sport for organising and sponsoring the events. It was GREAT!!!

Congrats to all the competitors – from first to last – you did a great job.

Till I write again … Cheers
Rudolf

BSG Energade PE

It was race time again on the weekend at Port Elizabeth in the penultimate race of the BSG Energade Series. My brother, Ruan and I travelled Saturday morning, stayed in the hotel in PE and had lots of fun.

Sunday morning we had an early breakfast, got all our stuff together and went to the race venue about 1km from our hotel. We saw the wind was picking up and knew that, with the much smaller field than at the other races, the cycling leg will be tough.

The field was much smaller than normal because of the Africa Cup in Pretoria being held on the same day. Because of this the atmosphere at the race was much more relaxed and chilled, it didn’t even seem as if I was racing that day.

Ruan, Claude, Rudolf, Wian, Richard, Abrahm

I racked my bike and followed my usual routine. Even minutes before the start we were still joking, but when the race started …. we were going out full blast. I was lucky to hang onto Claude’s feet during the swim and made sure I stayed there. Claude, Abrahm and I had a small gap on Wian and Richard as we entered transition and maintained the gap exiting T1. For the first few km of the bike leg, I felt useless. I went through a little bad spot, but soon started feeling better again and worked with Claude and Abrahm on the bike. We managed to increase our lead on Richard and Wian on the bike leg to about 2 minutes.

We entered T2 and were flying out on the run. I managed 3rd overall.

Now – only the final in Big Bay, Cape Town coming Sunday.

Till then … cheers and enjoy…
Rudolf