Sport	Off Road Triathlon
Event	Xterra Lite Buffelspoort
Date	22 January 2017
Where	Buffelspoort, South Africa
Distance	25.4 Km
Finishing Time	01:58:58
Race Number	1549
Result	154/556
Top %	28%
Pace	4:41 m/km
Speed	12.81 km/h
Click here for details about Xterra Lite Buffelspoort
Comments	View Comments

My experience at the event:

January has been hard on me. Two weeks after running the Kudus (and getting injured) here I was, ready to start, together with my brother in law, one of my favourite races in the triathlon calendar: the XTerra in Buffelspoort. I always loved the area, the dam so clean and warm, the mountain bike so challenging, and the trail race so incredibly tiring.

After breaking my best time last year, I had no illusions about this edition. Basically since the day my son was born, I reduced my training hours, and trying to find some sort of routine has been impossible. I'm sure things will evenutally pick up, but my goal was to simply finish the race without too many problems. Unfortunately I was wrong.

After a decent swim (only 400 meters) in a very crowded lake, I started on my mountain bike the ascent before the course got too technical and single lane. I've never been a fan of rocks, and once again, just like two years ago, I ended up crashing on a rocky downhill: With few kms to go I panicked a little when I lost my footing on the tricky surface, and I made the worst mistake you can do on those occasions: I slammed on the front brake and I ended up flying away from my bicycle. I crashed quite hard and hit my knee (and destroyed my elbows) and the rest of the race was pure agony. But retirement is never an option, so after droppping the bike I started a very slow 6km trail run and I somehow managed to complete the course just under 2 hours, with Curtis (struggling because of a cold) finishing 16 minutes behind.

After getitng my medal, a free massage and being treated in the medical room Curtis and I decided to stop to celebrate at the usual Hooters. Because I may be in pain, but I'll always have time to eat chicken wings!

Details about the race here: https://connect.garmin.com/modern/activity/1537378558

Some pictures (the full album sits here: https://www.flickr.com/photos/olafmeister/albums/72157678104218961)



  Back to sports

---