At the end of the first week in January in 35 degree heat I raced the TotalSports Terra Firma Challenge - my first outing of 2010. The orginal plan was also to be part of the 'All Star 7 man team' where we had amongst others Olympic Champion Jan Frodeno and World U23 Mountain Bike Champion Burry Stander. I was to compete on the swim leg but due to the strong winds it and the paddle ski legs were cancelled. I was left with the Terra Firma however - a 55km road bike / 13km road run / 30km mountain bike / 9km beach run.

Although in the end I won the event I have to admit racing felt a bit alien ! As soon as I started the road ride I new it was going to be a long day as I had left my legs behind in the last few days training. Sometimes you just have to suck it up though and keep the legs turning. My efforts were not helped with some confusion in the transitions which meant I was not given my special feed bag but thats a story for another day and I have already given out enough abuse to my soigner ! 4 hours without food makes for an interesting 9km run in soft sand as you can imagine.

I only have a day left here to enjoy the sun and I am looking forward to some time at home before coming back to Africa for a 10 week block before my first ITU race of the season - those 10 weeks will definately be business weeks, not as many nights in the restaurant and definately not as much red wine and gelato . . . well maybe some sneaky gelato