It was time for SA Championships. They took us all the way to the “windy” city – Port Elizabeth. For the elite’s – yes, I’m first year u/23 – this will double up as an ITU African Cup. I was feeling good about my chances because of my previous races and results leading up to SA champs. I was the first time that I would race against the big boys of South African triathlon and a few International athletes – which includes former World Champion, Tim Don.
We flew down to PE on Friday and on Saturday did the course familiarization, registration and pre-race briefing.
Soon it was Sunday. Our race only commenced at 13:30 – so there was lots of time to chill. There was silence before our race started and my heart was pumping(loudly). As the gun went off I knew this is now – I’m playing with the big guns. The swim was very intense and we were fighting for position and slip behind the good swimmers. I got caught out behind the wrong feet in the swim and lost a bit of time there, but it wasn’t that bad. After the first 750m lap, I could see that I was 2nd pack and the front pack was about 30 sec ahead of us. I swam as hard as I could but I couldn’t catch them. Running into T1, I saw that our group was quite big and thought that we could catch the front pack if we worked well together.
Unfortunately we didn’t. We tried out best to catch them but that didn’t happen. I motivated the other athletes to push just a bit harder. The frustration was on everybody’s faces.
I had a good T2 and was out in a flash. The last(biggest?) hurdle was the 10km run. My legs were sore after the bike but the adrenalin was pumping and I started the run very motivated. The run consisted of 3 laps of 3.3km. On the last lap my body didn’t want to go anymore. I wasn’t running - I was just surviving. I finished the race 8th overall elite and 2nd u/23. This was a huge success for me. It was my first race with the big dogs and I managed to survive and do well, I was very happy but tired.
Cheers
Rudolf
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