Seeing as this is the first of many blogs to come, I thought it would be a good start to not only write something about myself, but to also give you some idea of who I am and how I came to be.

Aaaah, the dilemma we all face when we have to tell the story of our lives – where to start? Honestly I have no idea, but I’ll start at the beginning and try to keep it short, so bear with me while I give you an in depth look into the life of Abrahm Louw.

Over the past few years I had many great obstacles that I needed to overcome, but I suppose every aspiring athlete does. This forced me to make decisions and choices which, if I am being truly honest, I doubt I would make again. I have no regrets, as I do not believe that life should be lived one step in the past always beating yourself up about the choices you made. Money was never really one of my desires, but the reality is that you can’t live without it. There were times in my life that when I had something to eat and somewhere to close my eyes for the night, I would be more than happy. If you reside in Africa you will learn the true meaning of poverty. Thanks to my great hard working father, I never really had too big worries and had everything I needed, or at least the basics I suppose. The truth is, if I was not one of the “lucky” athletes who got spotted at an early age, and received sponsored gear and equipment, I would not have been able to continue living out my passion. My parents would never have been able to afford keeping me in the sport.

I always try to stay positive no matter what, through all the ups and downs of life. As I grew up I started realizing how much my parents actually did for me- I am who I am today because of them and all the help and support I received from ITU, Specialized and my sponsors throughout the years from when I started doing triathlon.

The biggest mistake I made was pursuing my one and only dream of becoming a top triathlete and in doing so left my studies to train together with world class athletes in my home town Potchefstroom, South Africa. This went well for some time, but as I was still young I didn’t actually know what I let myself into and before I knew it triathlon was the only thing in my head. I lost most of my social life and I became paranoid with my training and especially with my food . The first year I excelled and did excellent, but we all know what they say about too much of a good thing. From then I didn’t really improve too much, everything went great with my training sessions, but came race day, my performance slacked to an embarrassing level. All of this just because I didn’t have a life outside of triathlon, everything used to be so much fun and exciting and I would never have taken it so serious at such a young age if I knew that this would be the result. This taught me a great lesson in life, but I managed to rescue myself and I have found a way to enjoy training, having a life that doesn’t have anything to do with triathlon, and to enjoy whatever food is available. I thought it would be a good idea to share this because it can have a huge impact on athletes similar to or younger than my age. I think that’s enough for today.

As winter is on the rise in RSA, there’s going to be some tough training and preparation waiting for me leading up to the Youth Olympic Games to be held in Singapore in August, but thanks to Specialized for supplying warm gear I don’t think it will be a problem (I think I can go train at the Arctic, haha).