Xterra-rised!

It seems that the Xterra was all that it promised (or threatened) to be - and 'gruelling' would not be a bad word to describe it - at least the bike section that is! Saturday turned out to be an awesome day for racing in Grabouw - blue skies and sun, but not too hot.

The first leg of the race was up to our specialist swimmer Sven 'Tango' Bourquin, who was one of the few brave souls who hit the water in a Speedo amongst all the other wetsuit clad competitors, and was outstanding in the swim - not only because of the 19 degree water. Somehow he managed to evade our photographers, but you may be able to pick him out somewhere in all the chaos. After being hit with a surprise 800m dash over open ground from the water to the transition area, he passed on the timing chip and sent me off on the 30km MTB course.

Things did not go as smoothly as I would've like as after seven kilometres I buckled my rear rim slightly meant that my brakes were binding for the rest of the race - not great on a course that already involved some mad climbs and. The technical difficulties did not stop there as a bit later I fritzed my odometer on an unexpectedly deep water crossing and then lost 1/3 of my gears to bad 'chain-suck' reducing my 27 gears to 18... again not really ideal for a course with some rather hectic ascents. So after a rather long 3hrs out on the course I finally made it back to the transition area to hand over to our runner, Carmen, who did well considering the fact that this was actually an offroad race was only sprung on her at the last minute!

All told, Team Sierra-Foxtrot-Tango did not really pose a huge threat to the big guns. We finished 145th out of 179 overall (35th of 39 teams in our category) with a total time of 4hrs 44mins. The overall winner, Conrad Stoltz completed all three legs in 2hrs 44mins - less time than I was out there on the bike for! Nonetheless, we finished and got the medals to prove it, it was good fun, the beer tasted good afterwards and it is definitely a better way to spend a Saturday morning than moping about the house with a post Friday night hangover!