Life as a countdown

In life we should  go through every day with a pre-set goal, something to reach for, something to achieve. This is what enables us to stretch ourselves and to inspire the people around us.

Ever since I was a little boy, I have set myself very high goals. At the age of about 10 or 11 I had already decided I would become a professional cyclist. I realised very soon that it is not one big step but a million little steps that get you there, and every step is a goal and has a countdown.

My first big “countdown” came as an U10 rider doing my first National Championships in Kimberly in 2001. The last two weeks leading up to the race were nerve wracking but the days went by and I started dealing with the nerves and managed a 6^th place in the time trial.

After that another big countdown was my first ever tour, 15 years old doing the National U16 tour in Harrysmith, counting down for about two months, fully focused on the tour and doing all the right things in preparation for the big event. Two weeks before the start I broke my hand in two places after a bit of an accident, I had surgery and was in a plastercast until the day before the start of the tour (it was meant to stay on another 3 weeks). I raced over the rolling hills around town and through the  Golden Gate park with a broken but bandaged right hand, bagging a 4^th place in the criterium and 6^th overall in the tour.

The biggest countdown of my young career came before the South-African National Championships in 2012 held in Nelspruit. For three months leading up to the race, everything I did, I did with the Championships in mind, every kilometre  that I rode, I rode for the Championships, focusing on the time trial event. The big morning came 1st of March 2012, easy light breakfast, just enough to last me an hour at full pace.  I won the U23 silver medal and came 8^th overall.

That concluded the 11 year countdown to my first ever SA Championships medal, it was the ride of my life J

Through this journey I have learned that you can achieve so much in life, not just your career, as soon as you set yourself a goal and have something to work towards!

Coming back

Two days from today, it will be four months since I got hit by a car while training and preparing for racing in Europe with Mtn Qhubeka and also the national u23 team.

Ive had two surgeries, one to fix a big whole in my right leg where a piece of my bike ripped through in the accident and a second one to repair ligaments in my knee that were torn. Even thou I'm still busy with rehab on my right leg and only got back to riding on the road a couple of weeks ago, the Dr's and physios are all really happy with how I'm progressing, lets see, maybe I can even race again towards the end of this year!

My training over the last two months has ranged from starting to just lift my leg off the bed, having to use all my strength to keep it in the air for a few seconds, and where I used an elastic band to do leg extensions, to where I can now do one legged squats and lunges, ride my bike for an hour or two a day and have full range of movement back in my leg.

I have had so much support through this time, from the team, my team mates and friends and family. They have all kept me positive and kept my morale high, without them I'm not sure if I would have been this far into my recovery and so far into coming back, so thank you to everyone that have been going through this with me, you mean the world to me :-)

The past week in words...

Over the past few days after creating my blogg, I have been faced with a lot of challenges. All of them different is so many ways, but all handled and taken care of.

It all began sunday morning the 18th of September, waking up and getting ready for a day at the Zoo doen't sound like your average race day? But this was the case, it was time for the Mtn Zoo lake criterium hosted by Johannesburg Zoo where Arran brown, my captain and teammate walked away as the victor of the 2hour race.
Wednesday morning Bradley Potgieter, Arran Brown and myself went for a long ride to the south of Johannesburg to have a look at the route for the upcoming Randwater race for Victory starting on the rand waterboard road. It would become a very long day in the saddle, spending more than five hours on the bike, riding 160km and ending of the ride with the last 30km into a block headwind.
The long journey south on wednesday helped a lot in sunday's race as I mannaged to get into the early break and with propper knowledge of the route ended up being on of two riders to crest the main climb of the day with a considerable lead over the main bunsh containing all of my team mates and most of the pre race favorites. We got hauled back into the lead group with no more than 12km to the finish and again our team walked away winners of the day with Arran brown being the first man across the line.

All ended last night with a great "get together" at Arran's house, most of our team made it there and we had a lot of laughing and great company.

Next challenge would be a race down in durban, hope to see a lot of old friends there.

Creating my blog page

I woke up this morning with a pounding headache, a sore throat and feeling ill. After looking for a Dr on google in my area as I haven't been sick since moving to Roodepoort I found a GP's office not too far from my house. I went to the Dr and got booked off until the end of the week so I decided to take the extra time and make good use of it and create my own blog page.

I will try and update it once or twice a week and tell you all about the things I got up to in the last few days and the things I had to deal with as a professional rider on the Mtn Qhubeka cycling team. Soon there wil be a link to all my other pages such as twitter, facebook and our Mtn Qhubeka website.

I'm looking forward to giving you all an in-depth view and a daily dose of JC

JC