So since my normal racing partner decided to go for a nice 100km jog somewhere in Cape Town, I was stuck having to race with teammate Greg Avierinos as Nevarest Jabberwock.

Knowing I had 2 months of solid loafing training due to injury, and Greg just returning from OCR world champs, this was going to suck on so many different levels. At that stage, we were tied in the series for 1^st Place with Keyhealth Nevarest teammates Jaco Lourens and Malcolm Dunkeld.

Starting on the run I actually felt good and luckily still had a bit of speed in my legs, but this soon ended as I realised that my speed endurance has suffered a bit in my endeavour to eat as much cake as possible and not being able to use my left leg for some time.

All my thoughts were focused on hoping that Greg will offer to tow me a bit, which would have been a first for me, but I didn’t really care at that stage, as I was pretty sure blood was starting to come out somewhere it shouldn’t at the pace I was expected to hold.

So coming into transition we were still together with Keyhealth Nevarest which stayed more or less the same until CP 5 of the cycle leg, which unfortunately saw us taking a left turn a bit too early and then spending the biggest portion of the cycle leg trying to play catch up, which wasn’t all bad, as at least I stopped foaming around the mouth from overexertion

On the last CP coming into transition again for the last kayak leg, we saw Keyhealth Nevarest on the water already so we knew we had very little time to spare and threw our bikes down like crazy people and sprinted for a boat.

Now I have done a few of these races, but never before have I felt such power coming from a paddler before, I mean we were essentially performing a wheelie to the 1^st CP and then I realised Greg was still in the water pushing the boat and not actually paddling, so Kudos to Greg for trying something different. On the last CP we decided to take out the boat and run the last section with the boat as it would be faster, but alas we couldn’t make up the lost time…

So in the end, we finished in 2^nd place, a mere minute behind our fellow teammates, but they definitely deserved the win and we will see them again next year!