Travelling to venues that aren’t close to home is always an experience. Although I began to get sick the Thursday before the weekend, I was still determined to race on Saturday. When we arrived at the venue on Saturday morning I was already blown away by the amazing view we had of Meerendal wine estate. The rookie elite batch set off around 8:10, and as we were at the start line, I was really questioning my reasoning as to why I thought I could do the race, my chest was tight and it wasn’t easy to breathe. So the competitor in me took over, I had to race! As most people know, having a tight chest and running hills is not always the best combination, and although this race didn’t have too many hills, there we still a few that really challenged my lungs. Half-way through the race I felt like I couldn’t breathe, but still carried on running as I wanted to win the Ladies Category for Rookie overall as well as the u/16 category. As it neared the end of the race, I have never felt so drained and tired in my life before, but I was happy it was finally over and I had fun for the most part. Do my great surprise, I then landed up doing the Sprint races about 2 hours after my actual race, which probably wasn’t such a good idea considering I was sick, but the true Warrior in me won again, and I landed up doing it anyway. My brother, Dylan van Tonder and I (otherwise known as the V2 twins) managed to get 6 podiums for the team that weekend, and coincidentally we won the exact same things, my brother in Men’s and myself in the Ladies category, we both won overall, u/16 and sprint races. Twin power! Now off to the next warrior….