THE SEASON OF THE CHILDREN

What a great kick off to the start of the athletics season! My daughter, Tianari, is a real treat to have around. She is always friendly and laughing - never ever is she down or quiet. She dreams of becoming an actress and to earn her way in Hollywood. It's not often that children from South Africa seriously want to pursue such a dream, but she is 100% convinced that this is the road for her to travel upon. My children dream big, very big and this is so inspirational to me. So often people finish school and then still wonder what the heck to do, but these little energy balls occupying my house is really set! Not to be convinced otherwise by anybody. If she would train with her brother she can become really good, but she wants nothing, nada, zipp from this idea...Holywood and thats it!

This is so great to me that she does not want to live my dreams. She is unique and thats the way it will stay. Never the less, she has to compete in the school sports and so she did yesterday. Winning the 70m hurdles and also coming first in the 1200m in a record breaking time of 4:55. Not bad for someone who NEVER EVER trains and just walks around singing all day long! I love her to bits and I wish her all the best for 2010!!

As for my son, he too has made his mind up. South Africa is very big on rugby and cricket and the pressure on children to compete in these disciplines is very high. Yet he doesn't care and wants to chase his dream of becoming the best in the world. Like a young Burry Stander his mind is made up and he trains accordingly.

The week and weekend before the athletics we trained very hard and we cycled over 4 hours on Saturday and on Sunday ran a brisk 15km hilly route. He was subsequently stung on his ITB by a wasp and on Sunday night the swelling was still bad. To add to all the drama the track was wet and slow with all the rain we have had (going for 300mm just in January!). My personal goal for him was around 4:05 since it was the first race in 2010 and also he has only recently started with speed work. In true Weasel style he kept to all the time checks, asked me his lap times on every lap and nailed a 3:58 in a new 1200m record time. I am really proud of him. We have got permission from the school that he doesn't have to compete in the friendly competitions as his schedule is really full.

Feb 6 - Athletics

Feb 7 - Provincial triathlon

Feb 11 - Inter Schools Athletics

Feb 18 - Inner Ring Athletics

Feb 20 - South African Cycling Championships

Feb 26 - Northern Region Athletics

March 6 - Provincial Athletics

March 18 - South African Athletics Championships for Primary Schools

March 21 - South African Triathlon Championships

So this is what the young man has to do during the next seven weeks start February. During this time he is still writing exams and I will try to make life as easy as possible for him.

These little bodies running around my house is an inspiration and I just cannot imagine a life without them.

Be strong, live hard.

TriJackal

FOUNDATION TIME

For the first time in a while I am starting to feel stronger again. The concrete in the foundation is starting to set. Far from fit…oh so very far, but things are beginning to look up again. When starting from almost scratch again, like I have, then the first 6 weeks are hell. Your body starts complaining during the shortest of workouts and then the next day you are scampering and shouting around looking for the physio’s telephone number! And that’s not where it ends! Pulling my hippo resembling physique up the hills and then trying to stop it again down the other side is by no means an easy task! Thank goodness for bed time. The time where you can click off the power switch and just…yes, just sleeee…oh NO! What was that? The little voice in you head wakes up at bed time constantly yelling at you: ‘you’ll never get back in the shape you were’, ‘you have waisted your life’, blah blah blah!

The great thing is that six weeks are only six weeks! And they pass rapidly. Suddenly you start to notice a normal stomach figure appearing from under your shirt. That idiot voice packs up and goes where ever the hell it wants to. Energy and power returns to training rides and running sessions. Hills aren’t so steep any more. And then one day, the best of it all returns: you suddenly remember why you have loved this sport so much in the first place!

What makes triathlons so different is the total exhaustion that one experience during preparation and execution. From when the program starts to where the tapering ends. A kaleidoscope of feelings. The one day feeling that no one can touch you now and then just the next day to stand staring at a solid brick wall. Not knowing what the heck is going on. Dead legs, dead head and dead will. Almost like depression getting in behind the wheel and turning one around as soon as the thought of training enters the mind. But those who pull through are the ones who will certainly taste the fruits of success. The podium is reserved for these steel minded people.

Lucky for us there are family and friends to motivate and pull us through these rivers which are trying to pull us sideways. My goal is far. April 2011. But I am as focussed as never before. I will not let go of what is right. I live with an 11 year old boy who is so motivated and in love with his sport. This sheer joy that I see in him is what is driving me to get off my own but and to pull him through his tough times. He impresses me daily and I have no bigger wish than for him to have the right people noticing him at the right times. For him to one day stand on the podium he is working so hard for. He, you and I – at times we pull one another and at times we get pulled. It is great having great friends.

My diet is going just dandy! Man I am chuffed about it and I have lost over 5kg! My total kilojoules intake for last week was 50,920 with an average of 7,274 per day. Only healthy foods and I have not cheated once this year! As my weight drops I will slowly up this until it reaches around 10,000 per day. Obviously when I get down to the low 70’s I will eat exactly what I burn every day.

Until we chat again, keep the rubber side down and BE STRONG AND LIVE HARD!

TriJackal

IS YOUR HABIT GOOD?

According to the brain of TriJackal, our habits are the determining ‘make or break’ of athletic success. I am more convinced of this than of any other multimillion dollar ‘success is guaranteed’ plan to be found ANYWHERE.

Why would I start this writing with such a bold statement? Easy! Because it is the truth. We get fit and we get unfit. We get thin and we get fat again. We live healthy lifestyles only to go unhealthy again. We don’t drink and then one day we go and get dumb drunk! Being human, I have been a part of this lifestyle and therefore I am at a point in my life where I have to use my homo sapien DNA advantage and start changing things!

In my personal opinion the biggest weak point we have as humans are eating. We always know the correct answer, but rarely make the right choices! Stop going on and an over drugs, cigarettes, alcohol, etc. Look around us and see how unhealthy people have eaten themselves. Overweight children are bound to turn to beer just to have that moment of ‘fitting in’ and feeling good. It was the overeating that makes them look really unattractive between friends and therefore the binging starts. My point? If those parents have had GOOD habits cemented into their lifestyles at home then our communities could have been so different!

We should not speak of diet. We should just be eating healthy naturally. We should not be mentioning that we will start training again, but it should just be part of our daily, healthy routine. We must not live for the day that we can shove a pizza down our throats. We always feel bad afterwards and then we walk around with this feeling of guilt. This ‘I am craving for a bag of fried chips’ is the signal for the rebirth of a bad habit.

If you need eg. 9000kj daily to maintain a healthy body weight, why would you swop 3000 of those healthy kilojoules for deep fried crap? Why swop a healthy orange and plum for a 1000kj chocolate bar filled with unhealthy preservatives? I think it is down to bad habits. Previously I had no clue as to how many calories I could eat per day to maintain or lose body weight. I usually just checked the fat content and if it was low I would indulge. And indulging is bad! When you stop training the bad habits continue! All this indulging would constantly keep me 3 or 4 kg’s above my ideal racing weight. But, when I read on Johan Stemmet’s (www.tristemmet.blogspot.com) blog that he is now doing calorie counting on the foods he eat, I decided for once to try it too. Man did this change my life! It is easy and almost all foods are labelled with kj, etc. info.

I am feeling good. I am putting healthy kj’s down my throat and not bad ones. I can eat 7500kj a day and be healthy OR I can shove 7500kj down my throat and be hospitalised within a month! Weird hey! Do not eat the burger just because you have calculated that you can fit it into your daily kj intake. You are harming your body. Especially us Ironman/endurance athletes. Our bodies are under stress and we are treating them like abusive owners. No to bad fats. No to bad sugars. No to bad habits. That is what we deserve.

I will appreciate your feedback on this as this was quite a revelation to me over the past two or so weeks.

In the mean time be strong and live hard!!

TriJackal

HAPPY NEW 2010

Happy New Year filled with happiness, luck and health is my wish to all my friends and family. I hope that after this year at least one of us has invented something great, re found true love, embarked on an unthinkable expedition/adventure and also just stumbled upon a big pot of gold for no reason whatsoever!

The holiday was great and we left for Dikhololo on the 25th. The temperature was around 30C for the whole week and wouldn't have asked for more. The chalet we stayed in was a two bedroom unit with everything we needed already there, just took clothes food and one or two drinks…haha!

The children had their mountain bikes and they were gone as soon as we kicked them out of bed only to be seen again once they needed some food or ice cream. The camp is situated inside a wild reserve making it great for the kids with the bikes. One day an eland opened a dust bin and started eating away at the crap inside. We stood and watched it from about 5m away and it was awesome to stare at the largest buck ‘just like that’.



Every day we would spend next to the pool and just hunger ourselves out for supper time. We ate flatties (whole chicken), rump steaks, homemade hamburgers and potjiekos (pot food would be a direct translation).



One day we took my son, Wessel, for some motor pacing on his mountain bike in the reserve. I didn’t train at all giving, not only my body, but more importantly my mind a break from the ‘I have to go training’ thoughts – man and did I relax! The young man got a good 1h30 session in and that was his training for the week. He one day tried to go off-road without his helmet and gloves...boy what a mistake! The picture speaks a thousand words.

What I will remember most about the holiday was the rock jump. There is a 3 – 4 meter rock from which you can jump into a swimming pool. I and Wimpie committed ourselves to jump into it on every single day…and we did. My bum is blue and black from the everyday impact, but the thrill was great! I will soon ad a very funny clip of where he miss judges himself and nearly had a very bad mishap!



One day we drove into town to stock up on some fresh dairy, etc. We walked past a pet shop and immediately I saw my next best friend…a little 4 week old Pitbull Terrier. I have had 3 Great Danes before and I really missed the friendship of a bigger dog. There are many untrue myths regarding these dogs and if trained well they are a joy to have. They are very intelligent (won 14 of the 25 super dog competitions), love people and they love children, just what I want. The Danes were just too relaxed for me and I want a work dog that will fetch a stick in water, play with the kids till they pass out and go on long runs with me whenever I feel like it. I have him now and his name is Smit. He is on Twitter as @iamsmit and he already has 5 followers…woof woof!

That is the holiday in a nut shell and I hope that yours was great too. We have so much to look forward to during 2010. Schumacher returning to F1. Can Lance dethrone Contador? The soccer World Cup right here on our door step. Personal targets. The dreams and ambitions of our loved ones.

Whatever makes you tick and whatever you are looking forward to, may it be over and above your wildest thoughts and imaginations!

Be strong. Live hard.

TriJackal

WEEK ONE

So far, so good. Always in the beginning of a training season I have to slowly build my distance and speed in order to look after this left knee of mine. It tends to pain slightly, but after about six weeks or so it just goes away. Currently my knee is feeling very good and I will look after it while I am building my base. I am building my base until end of May 2010 after which I will plan the next 12 months leading up to Ironman South Africa 2011. I will do a few duathlons and also a few half Ironman distance triathlons.

I will focus a lot on my running and will have to do a marathon or three next year. I will not go out to smash times, but will really focus on my target Ironman marathon speed. If I can easily manage around 4:20 per K I will be happy. I am not too worried about the bike speed as I know it is within what I can achieve. Also the swimming is not too much of a head ache; I will just swim around 2000m per session and then pick the miles up around January 2011. I don’t want to make my swim sessions too long as I will lose motivation to keep going. It is my least favourite discipline by far! I will focus on building up to 1 hour Ironman pace and get my body used to the rhythm. I am a strong believer at ‘target pace training’ and will strive towards that in all three disciplines.

I am currently swimming 3 times a week and will do around 80 laps per session. I like the short swims and that is why I will keep it short for as long as possible.

In the gym I am really putting a lot of effort into strength training and will continue building for the next month or two. There after I will up the reps and keep the weight constant. The weights are killing my legs, but it is improving weekly. My core training is very tough, but it is one of the most important aspects of being a good runner. I will just have to keep the sweat pouring!

I am cycling 3 to 4 times per week, with one power/hill session, one time trial session and obviously a long ride. I am comfortable for about 2h30 to 3h, but then my legs are nearing the limits of my current fitness. I would like to up that to about 5h and then maintain that till October 2010. Then I can start bombing some really long rides.

I am very unfit and it really shows on my runs! I am running 4 – 5 times a week with also one hill/power session and one long run of (currently) about 15 – 20K. I will start doing time trials in about 6 weeks time when I feel my knee is comfortable with the speed increase. I am running very very slow at between 5 – 5:30 per km pace. I first want to get my weekly distance to around 50 – 60km and then I can work on upping the pace.

I am very grateful to have a training partner in my son. I have never had a running partner who is faster than I am and I am looking forward to the TT’s we are going to race in the future! Not that I will be a problem for him, but I will have him as a carrot…hehe! Today we almost had 4 hours in the saddle. I love the mud although it's a pain in the butt to keep the gear clean!!

His track season starts mid January 2010. He is on schedule and I am looking forward to this coming year. It is his last year doing 1200m and I think he targets to peak at around 3:30 -3:40. His base is very good and we are starting with his speed/track sessions next week. Nice burning lungs and muscles…the joys of track racing!!

Have a great week and remember to live HARD!!

Be strong!
TriJackal

2010...BRING IT ON

I am not a big fan when it comes to New Year’s resolutions. My biggest issue with the whole ‘let’s become as new person’ next year, is that if you realise that something in your life has to change – just freaking do it! If it can wait till the end of the year, month or week then it just isn’t that important to you and I will almost put money on the fact that you won’t keep it up anyway! Change has to be done slowly. Change has to be calculated. Change has to be achievable. Otherwise it will just be another failed attempt at something that will now be even harder to achieve come the next ‘new year’!

Measured against my friends in the sporting world I am really not the best athlete in the world! But, once I put my head to something I rarely don’t achieve it. I set unrealistic goals, give myself enough time and then work my ass off to get there. I have to date only done 2 triathlons ever! My first was a half Ironman, the 70.3 in East London, South Africa. That day was the first time I have ever swam in the ocean…mind you, it was my first open water swim EVER! To top it all, I received my time trial bike the day before the race AND raced with it! Ideal hey!! During the swim I wanted to quit the race after only 5 minutes, but I just couldn’t find a damn boat to pick me up! I kept going until I was a bit calmer and then just went 10 strokes at a time. It was horrible. With the cycling leg I had a torrid time in this very uncomfortable position on my new bike. After about 70 kilometres my hamstrings were cramping really bad not being used to sitting so much forward. Needless to say it was very painful. My preparation was crap. My race was crap. Could I have expected anything better? No – what I put in was what I got out.

Then came Ironman South Africa. My preparation was 70% of what it could have been and I was really hoping to grind out a sub 10 hour. When a group of riders on our December holiday heard what my goal was they just cracked up and called me a fool. They said I had no idea what an Ironman was and that I will definitely not achieve my 10 hour mark. Maybe I was one. But this fool is as hard headed as a good old African rock. I said 70%. Why? Did I do any open water swimming? No! Only one previously and that was the terrible race I was talking about above! Here I was again. Only this time it was two 1,9km laps. After the first one I started cramping and really just hung in there for the remainder of the swim. I was cramping so bad that I couldn’t get my wetsuit off by myself and I had to unclip my cycling shoes from the pedals and put them on sitting down! For 180 very sore kilometres I had to nurse my cramping all the way riding the laps like a turtle on holiday. I then knew I wasn’t going to love the run. My honest feeling was that I would be able to manage the first 14k lap, but then I would have to walk the remainder. I was cramping like crazy. I stuck it out on the run for 2 laps, but on the 3rd one I was just hurting too much. The cramps turned into one long cramp not letting go at all. I crossed the line in 10h 17. Was I pleased with the time? Hell no! My goal was 10 hours and I failed myself. I am so proud of the medal, VERY much. It was the hardest achievement of my life. I pulled myself after only 1,9km’s into the race right till the end. When I look at the swimming photos as I run to transition one, I can see the disappointment in my eyes. There I knew that I had let myself down in training.

Now, let’s get to the goals for the new season. I have got two: 1st – Train with my son and help him achieve his goals. 2nd – Start my 2011 Ironman training and do it WELL!

Wessel wants to achieve the following in 2011:

Get provincial colours in athletics, cross country, duathlon, triathlon and cycling. He wants to secure some sponsors with whom he can start a relationship. I will be there motivating him to keep his hard work up and be responsible to those who invest in him.

Regarding Ironman 2011. I have set myself some ridiculous goals once again. I will not post the total time that I will be chasing on the web. I have posted my approximate separate goals previously: swim 1 hour; cycle 4:45 and run 3 hours. Apart from the swimming, I will coach myself as I am yet to be convinced that paying a lot of money towards coaches will really benefit my cycling and running. I know what exercises, power and endurance work I need to do to achieve the cycle and run goals. I am very sober when it comes to my weaknesses and I will this time work my butt off to get stronger…and yes, I will be well prepared for the open water swim!!

This is the sporting goals of TriJackal and the Weasel. We will do our best to achieve these. All we can hope for is good health and all other factors outside our control to work out well too.

May your goals be big ones too and I hope that we can share the tears of joy once we achieve them!

Be strong and live hard!

TriJackal

CATCH THE VIBE, SUMMER AND ALL...

Gimme sunshine everyday! That’s how I feel after a cold winter and a very soggy start to summer. Just watching the children outside jumping on their slip-and-slide describes the monstrous delight summer contributes to life. When summer came, our family grew by 5 little kittens, 3 little chicks, two pigeons and 4 rabbits! It looks like a farm out there. But, nature has this miraculous way of joining life and sunshine together that makes us experience something which is so wonderful and special. Something which cannot be put down in words or even be explained by a very literate tongue. Just one day it is there. And it’s so special, like right now.

Having endured a very tough 2009 in the mining industry with the economy going for ‘six of the best’ in the principal’s office, I am so looking forward to the upward turning of the graph in 2010. No matter what financial beating we have endured, I still have a really beautiful and ‘truly the best in the world’ wife, two lovely and talented kids and to wrap it all together like the ‘y’ in candy, is the fact that they are all in such immense shape and blessed with exceptional health.

Focus can be a strange thing if pointed at the less important subjects in life. It can make a teenager think that a pimple is the end of life itself. It blows out of proportion the milk I forgot to buy on the way home. It lets a little bit of bread crumbs on the back seat of the car bring endless tears in the eyes of a little heart. And for what? Just to be an ass to one self and to be an idiot to all other on earth. Focus is as important to life as breathing to the body. But, when constantly inhaling poisonous smoke, then quality of life and health will die a slow slow death. What is easier to make a success of? To sell 4 or 5 great products or to try and sell 100 great products? Remember ‘Jack of all trades, master of none’?

My focus for 2010:
1. Family
2. Health
3. Business

That’s it. Family will take rank above crumbs on the back seat. Jumping on a slip-and-slide will be done even if it causes a grass burn or three. Celebrating the cat’s birthday by eating burnt muffins on the lawn together with 4 little dirty hands will also take rank. Watching a girly movie with the lady of my life even though I cannot keep my eyes open…will be done (with a light beer in hand of course)!

Health is very important to me and I can boast that my children look better than a collectors Ferrari locked up in an expensive Italian show room. Since they were little we have had the two sweets per day rule. They can have two of any of the tasty stuff that children love, like crisps, fizzy drinks, chocolate bars, etc. in any combination and obviously limited to small sizes! They will train and keep fit and look after themselves. We have been taken on by many of our friends who calls us too strickt when it comes to sweets. Really? If I look around and read about the obesity problems in the younger aged children then it makes me sad. Very sad. Children decide the diets in the family, children demand the ‘STOP” when passing McDonalds on the way home from school. At parties at my house I have seen some of the children finish off the bag of candy, the cake and then they top it all up with a 150g bag of chips! The diet problems of the people on planet Earth is the responsibility of the grownups. My children’s physique is my responsibility and I will honour their little bodies and treat it with respect.

Let’s focus on what we focus. Let’s give the summer the chance to make us happy and not let life be winter all year long.

Now I will go play outside before I get on my bike and go for my three hour ride. I got this fat around my belly and I will get it away…come sweat and tears!!

Have an awesome day and remember to be strong and live hard!

TriJackal