Xterra Buffelspoort

The second leg of the South African Xterra Series for 07/08 will be held at the Buffelspoort Dam, just outside Johannesburg this Saturday, 17th November. It’s the second Xterra held at the rugged and challenging venue, and although I missed the first in February, its renown as true testing ground was not missed. It should be a great race, with Lieuwe Boonstra and Iain Don-Wouchope in the men to beat.

The swim will be a two lap 1500 swim and by far the cooler part of the day as we start at 10:00am and heat could and should be a telling factor on the 25km rugged, rocky and sandy mountain bike ride, and even more so over the 10km of bushveld trail run. The winner of last season’s event, Kent Horner, wont be racing this year, but won in just under 3hours. The course has been altered a fraction to the shorter side, but I’m still expecting a 2h40 race.  

It’s two weeks after back to back longer races, yet I’m feeling the better for it. I have had some encouraging training since Triple Challenge and although the focus has not soley been swim bike run, my system is still strengthening. I am hoping too that the course will be a longer tougher grind, as my condition is more to that trend.

My pick for the weekend will be Lieuwe Boonstra, who has had a stellar season racing Xterra European series with multiple podium finishes, as well as placing 12th at Worlds in Maui three weeks ago. He should be the inform man and class act for the day.

(Lieuwe Boonstra in action)

On the girls side my dow would be on Eszter Erdelyi from Hungary, the 2007 Xterra Euro Champion. Michelle Lombardi wont be racing, neither Jeannie Bomford. It could have been a battle royal with the three of them in the start pen, but perhaps saved for Xterra Shongweni on the 10th of February.

(Eszter Erdelyi racing with bike no.7)

Next week Stoltz is back in South Africa and coming down to Stellenbosch for some celebrations. Cant wait to hear his tales of the season and especially World Xterra Champs. Winning again 7 years after his first title, with the journey its been, I cant wait to hear the fine detail and emotion first hand. We’re planning a party of sorts for the man, and hoping he’ll arrive in the Bosch prepared for the worst.

I fly up on Friday morning, and back down Saturday evening after the event. Will try keep my blog updated as best I can, and really hoping to have some proper visuals of the race by Sunday night. Ruth has been trying to make sense of some new software to edit MPEG2 which my camera films in, and think we might be making progress.