Las Vegas chocolate

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Classic XTERRA humour! Stay true my family- if we wanted easy we’d do Ironman…

The pic is me on that great Milwaukee course

Visit XTERRAPlanet for info and XTERRA.TV for action

Pic by Gary Perkin

Xterra Grabouw

Kevin Flanagan, 23 Feb 2010

Grabouw, 1.5km swim, 25km mtb, 10km trail run

By Kevin Flanagan

I “raced” the Xterra off road triathlon on the weekend. It’s really the grand daddy of off road triathlons in South Africa. It is a series of triathlons held around the country, and it was Cape Town’s / Western Cape’s turn last weekend.

(Note: you have a big artery running down the inside of your legs, so if you want to cool down quickly, drop ice in your pants… this will help explain the last little bit of the race report)

Keeping the faith – Xterra race report

Don’t worry; I’ll be that good oke! I’ll give you +-300 days of warning before the next Xterra. If you think you are going to pitch up on the day, take on the Xterra, go out there and dazzle someone, please kindly get back in your car and go home. I had been warned, I had seen the weather the report (42 deg C), I had even put in some extra training, but crisis I did not get told I was going to be racing in hell.

Click here for the rest of this hilarious piece…

2009 Wilseyville Hare Scramble write up, pics and video here.

The entry form says AMA championship series, so maybe it was a big race? All I know is I was as green as it gets. The newness of this unfamiliar sport opened my eyes to what athletes new to triathlon and  XTERRA experience. Nervous, excited, clueless, scared of the unknown, scared of being last, scared of the mass start, and yes, just plain scared.

I grew up riding a little Yamaha PW 80 on our farm in South Africa, later a YZ 100, but when I got really serious about triathlon, (age 15) I sold the dirt bike in order to fund this new triathlon passion thing. I always promised myself, “the day I retire from triathlon I’m buying a dirt bike.” After winning XTERRA Worlds in 07 I thought “screw  that, its been 18 years, I cant wait anymore”, so bought a used Honda CRF450 in South Africa. Click for one of my fave blog posts. This summer I bought a new KTM 450 EXC  in the US. (my 1st new motorized vehicle ever) Could someone please explain to me how a new top end dirt bike costs the same as a top end mountain bike? How does a huge, knobbly, 30 pound dirt bike rear tire cost the same as a 500g  mountain bike tire?

Anyway, Wilseyville is in the scenic Sierra Nevada mountains. Yellow trees everywhere and beautiful country side made for an amazing course on private land. No pre riding allowed, which was quite intimidating.
The C and Ladies class was HUGE. I guess 350+ riders in 7 starts 1 min apart. Apparently in this sport I’m an old dude, (Vet plus) so I was in the 6th row. I thought the C class is the hack class, but I didnt see a single jean pant! Shiny pimped bikes, custom what what, new tires. – I was the only guy with indicators and a cute license plate. At least I could honk the horn to overtake. Mostly people on the ground, and a fat guy cramping.

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Triathlon is booming in South Africa. Ironman in PE, the 70.3 in Buffalo city, the XTERRA Series in its 6th year, a budding ITU programme and various off road multisports events.

Triharder.co.za is a cool new South African  based triathlon website and here is an interview I did a few weeks ago.

TriathlonTeam.com, (of which I’m a member) is currently doing a series of interviews on Triharder and here is an excerpt from the 1st interview with Nikola Tosic, the brain and motor behind TriathlonTeam:

[All the logos posted here were custom-designed for each of the athletes after working 1-on-1 with each of them. The ultimate goal is for the athletes to gain exposure and be able to brand and market themselves effectively. The site has become a hub for all the athletes’ pages and almost a bit of a “playground” for the athletes to share the lighter side of being a pro and to interact with each other.]

Read the rest of the interview here.