In October the Warrior Race was in Cape Town, a great change of venue with a little less heat than the scorching Gauteng, as well as some more hills to run. Greg, Alec, Calen and Louis went down to the Meerendal Wine Estate for the Warrior weekend. Louis came very close to third place, but unfortunately failed on breaking point.

Louis’ race report.

The beautiful Cape a place close to my heart, you can always expect the best trails and also all the seasons in one day. Luckily for us on race day we had perfect weather, a sunny day with a light breeze. I really wanted to do great at warrior #7 as I knew this was the second last big race of the season and also last practise race for me before nationals.

At the start line, I saw some international flavour; a Swedish super athlete (who came in 12^th at worlds if I am not mistaken) toeing the line with all the big SA names. I knew we were in for a fast run but having an idea of the climb ahead I decided to get into a rhythm and conserve as much energy as I could. Soon Claude and the Swedish athlete made a break and Thomas, Egor and I were running together. None of us gave an inch at the obstacles.

As the climb got steeper the pace got slower and I could tell Thomas was having a tough time keeping the pace, but I was caught in two minds. Should I go and make a gap or should I keep saving as much energy as I could? I decided to pass but didn’t go much faster and they kept in contact with me especially as Jonathan Heart decided to put all the carry obstacles with the climb to make things even tougher.

On the top of the climb, things changed drastically as I struggled to run with the concrete carry and this is where Thomas and Egor caught up and passed me. Right after this was the downhill and on my heels was Trevor Langerway, newly sponsored Reebok athlete, closing the gap fast even though he has a bigger physique than I. We both soon passed Egor, and then the real battle between us began! He was a bit faster through some of the obstacles but I caught him every time on the flat runs.

As we got to the tough obstacles we found Thomas and the Swedish athlete at rope hang, Thomas was just one rope ahead of me and Trevor, and we both pushed hard as we knew we could make up a lot of time on this obstacle. Unfortunately, the Swedish athlete was struggling to do this obstacle and lost his band here. The rest was easy till we reached Breaking point.

Just breaking point to contend with and unfortunately it didn’t happen for me today, my grip failed right at the end and I was going for that 3^rd position with the leaders just getting through in front of me. Marius Smith seized this opportunity and completed the podium. I got through eventually but was very disappointed.

At least there are a lot of positives to take out of this race and will definitely be fighting hard at nationals. I got 10th position in the end, and for me the main difficulties for this event was the very steep climb as well as rope hang which fatigued my arms so much that I struggled with breaking point. The highlights of this event were most certainly the views and awesome Mtb trail, especially the rolling down hills

Thanks for all my supporters and also to my sponsors for making this possible.