I
was finding myself on unfamiliar ground last weekend when I raced the African Cross
Triathlon Championships. That’s right – after a year, I was doing an off road
triathlon again. I did not train mountain bike for the past year, but was eager
to give it a go. I was lucky to be able to ride my brother’s Cannondale scale
29er, I have to say that is an amazing bike.
I
rode half of the race route the day before, just to get a general idea of how
bad I really am on the mountain bike. It wasn’t too bad I have to say.
On
race day, I was really relaxed and didn’t feel stressed in any way, I was just going
out to have fun and if I have a great race then I would be happy.
During
the swim leg Theo and I was leading, we entered transition together and left it
together. He is a better mountain biker than I, so I just wanted to stick to
his wheel. I did manage that for about 6km then he opened up a small gap on me.
I decided to race at my own tempo and not to kill myself. But then I saw Theo had
stopped to fix a puncture and I took full advantage of the opportunity and went
hard for a while. On a technical decent Nico caught me and I was applying the
same tactic - stick with him for as long as possible and keep the gap small.
Again he just dropped me and it felt like I had no power, so I went back to
plan B ride and continue own hard tempo.
There
was a fun but tricky single track section that I had to keep my nerves and notcrash,
I’m happy to say that I managed that. The rest of the cycle was fun and fast.
Start
of the run, Nico had almost a 2min gap on me, I was trying my best to catch him
keeping a good pace but in the end not good enough. Nico won and on the day he
was the better athlete. Theo had more bad luck with punctures and that took him
out of the race.
I finished 2nd but very happy with the result, coming from no mountain bike
training to come 2nd at an African cup.
Thanks
to all my family, friends and sponsors for supporting me.
Till
next time
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