It feels like this race should be my New Year's day- or my birthday. It was a year ago, in 2011, that this race really ignited the spark to re-enter the multisport training/racing scene with oomph. Af [...]
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As race day draws nearer, there's slightly more time to think back on the preparation and a little more on the year gone by since TotalSports Challenge 2011. It's been a busy year. At last count, appr [...]
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Open water swimming is special. There's something quite primitive about it- much like trail running I guess. It's just you (mostly) and the environment. Of course, being surrounded by the cold wat [...]
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Open water swimming is quite different to pool swimming, yet in some ways, very similar. A lot of the physiology is the same, just some of the skills required are a little different. The strokes and s [...]
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Having considered myself rather fortunate to get an entry to the 2011 event, I eagerly made my way in the early hours of the morning to the start near Lakeside. I knew very little about the event goin [...]
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This last weekend saw the running of the annual Surfer's Challenge hosted by New Balance, South Africa. The event is essentially a "runner vs paddler" with both disciplines taking off from Long Beach, [...]
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No, that wasn't a typo for "Altitude Training". This is very definitely about training your attitude. Now we pay a lot of attention to interval training, long slow distance, speedwork, HIIT, strength, [...]
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When you're gearing up for a race, and looking to estimate your effort close to race day, try this swim set to get a good feel for your current swimming prowess. You can also use this set throughout t [...]
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This is a goodie. A really unusual but exciting event. 5km of open ocean swimming. Now, we paddle this route often. On a calm day, on a North Wester and in a South Easter. The view is always fa [...]
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It's that time of year again when the sun shines just that little brighter and just that bit longer putting an extra bounce into every step- and making that swim training all the easier. And what bett [...]
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After a routine dental checkup I learned something about sports drinks which I never knew before: they're generally highly acidic. Now, most foods are acidic. Gherkins, bottled beetroot, fizzy drinks, citrus and so on. No big deal. But with an increase in training and racing, comes an increase in yo [...] read more
Ratios are interesting in that they simply compare two numbers against each as part of a whole. We intuitively grasp the concept of ratios until it gets unnecessarily complicated by an over-zealous maths teacher. But at the root we understand that 1:2 means something is twice as big as something els [...] read more
From jeep track, to single track to no track: this was Impi, a trail run second to none. The start was marginally delayed while the logistics team were putting the final touches to the course. You know, your average trail items like clearing the puffadders, securing the 8m high tightrope and making [...] read more
It's that time of year again when we go commando on the trails and hit the Impi Challenge with all we got. Last year we tackled this race for the first time, this year, we are going ELITE. We've done some trail runs; we've done some functional training; we've even done a little speedwork and [...] read more
It's that time of year again when the South Easter starts to make it's regular appearance around the Peninsula. And for wind-junkies, that only means one thing: time to play hard! This coming Wednesday, 12th October sees the start of the Milnerton-BigBay downwind dash for 2011: 18h00. Wind looks [...] read more
Another little small-town race-slash-festival which came up on the horizon was the Piket-Bo-Berg Cycle Challenge which was part of the Zebra Fees. Again, this was a nice opportunity to head out into the countryside and give something to the smaller communities. Yes, most of these "small" races and f [...] read more
Yes, before you even blinked and realised it, Spring is here. And if you slacked a little during the cooler months, I bet round about now, you're wishing you just kept on running, biking, swimming, paddling, gyming just that little bit more than you actually did ;) No fear, the Spring calendar is [...] read more
If you didn't plan to race this one, you might be kicking yourself. It's totally doable. There are activities and distances for everyone (and I do mean everyone), and there's even a mixed fun team event. So wether you're hard core athlete looking for a bit of racing time, or just you, Kleinmond is w [...] read more
I don't need to go into the hype-or-not-you-decide of barefoot running. There's already too much out there. For a lot of under-the-radar runners though, barefoot or minimal or natural running was a way of life long before it became a product you could sell. For me, it was largely due to injury and t [...] read more
a poem by Brent, aka FastTwitch (adapted from the original by Rudyard Kipling) If you can keep your head when all those around you are losing theirs and blaming it on you for forwarding them the entries, If you can trust your legs when all men are doubting theirs, but make allowance for the [...] read more