Monday, March 16, 2009

Its GO time!


I cant quite put it in words what you feel when you line up to start a race like the Cape Epic. You are filled with emotion…excitement, anxiousness, fear and a strange hunger to demolish everything and anything it can throw at you. Rest assure the Epic will bombard you with hundreds of kilometres of loose rock, sand, mud, mountains, river crossings etc… But that is all ok; after all you knew this when you signed up.

Saturday we, team ADIDAS BEMER (race number 102), start our second ABSA CAPE EPIC on the slopes of Table Mountain. We will start the prologue (time trial) at 9:26am. This time round we are stronger and more experienced. It has yet again been 7months of hard training for this event. I will not lie, if you want to do something like this it will take LOADS of commitment and sacrifice from oneself. We have stuck to our guns, gritted our teeth and now we are definitely ready!

On a lighter note…. I keep wondering about a few things. Like what music will they be playing on route this year? Hmmm…maybe Nico will get to hear his beloved Jonas Brothers. : ) What food will we be on the menu? I’m quite fond of those low fat yoghurts. What will the colour of our tents be and will this clash with our teamshirts? Haha…I try to occupy my head with these thoughts so that I don’t have to focus all my energy on the race itself. I remember last year on Day3 I started singing to myself just to keep my thoughts from dragging me down. My singing ended up dragging everybody down around us…great race tactic! : )

The last few weeks we really have been spoiled so much. Not only are we now officially sponsored by Adidas and Bemer, but Supersport Cycles have also come on board supplying us with top of the range MET helmets. Thank you to Natasja Halley for sorting us out in record time. I asked Nico last week…is there anything we must take with for the Epic, his answer to me was “only your bike, your toothbrush and a couple of undies”. We really do look like the professional outfit now and cant thank our sponsors enough for their contributions. Photos of our team gear have been posted so feel free to have a look.

I want to urge people out there to go see the race for yourself this year. It starts in Cape Town on Saturday and will be going through Gordonsbay, Villiersdorp, Greyton, Grabouw and lastly Somerset West. It is CLOSE to Cape Town this year…so try to make it for atleast one day and soak up the atmosphere of this world class sporting event. There is special spectator viewpoints set out on route and you can find more information by following this link: http://www.cape-epic.com/content.php?page_id=41&title=/Spectators/

Thank you again for all the support we have been getting…locally and internationally. It helps to keep the tank fuelled! We really hope to see you on route. Best of luck to all our fellow Epic riders. James and Simon, Noel and Louise, Nico P and Alison Sydor…enjoy and have fun. To Burry and Christopher…GIVE THEM HELL! To Hein my cousin, YOU CAN and WILL DO IT!

Lastly, to Nico… thanks for sticking by me. I will give this my all and hope to do you proud!

Later… : )

Jaco

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