Henri Schoeman | Monthly Archives: September 2010

When I think about this part of my journey through Europe I only see it as a huge learning experience. That’s why I have a blog to give the people who are interested the full inside story. While at our home in Radovljica, Slovenia I wasn’t fortunate enough to have carried on with my own training routine and a month before Worlds is a very stupid thing to do. This meant I lost fitness because my program consisted of mostly swimming to keep my fitness up, some cycling and some running to keep strength in my legs, as I was diagnosed with stress fractures in both the tibial shin area in late May and forced to take off running 7weeks. Well after my first race in Europe I wasn’t thinking and did the run section too hard too quickly and the problem came back right away. Closer to World Champs the pain settled, only a little, which left me with a lack of confidence and wasn’t running fit.

The High performance team arrived in Budapest on Tuesday 7th September after a 7 hour bus ride. We were lucky to have booked out the entire bus for only 15 people so we had a lot of room to put our legs up and stretch. That afternoon things seemed to be on track, feeling good and strong in the water when I went for a swim. That night when the team went to eat dinner I may have eaten something which was too rich and it turned my stomach upside down later that evening. I was forced to take off the next two days and there was only 3days before the biggest race of my life thus far.

Race day came, 12th September. The day I have been training for a long time. Woke up feeling very nervous and better then the last two days but still weak. It was going to be a long day because our race only started at 17h30 so I went for an early swim to waken my muscles, ate a big breakfast and watched movies for the rest of the day. The hotel we stayed in was really great! The Regnum Residence is a luxury four star hotel. I shared a room with fellow junior team mate Wian Sullwald and we were fortunate to have a lounge, flat screen TV, a toilet, bathroom and a big bedroom.

The time came when I needed to head off to transition to have my numbers put on myself, my bike and helmet and then set all your equipment up in transition. This race was a first in many ways. It was a first World Champs for me, biggest start I’ve had (80 athletes) and first time racing with such a big, electrifying crowd. The starting official sounded “ON YOUR MARK” and the electric horn went off. The first couple of meters I was ahead of the field but before I knew it, it felt as if my body switched off and I was being pulled back into the chaos of the other athletes, punched, pulled, swum over. I looked to my right and I saw an opening so I swam across and found my own space and put my head down and sprinted for the first bouy. I reached the first bouy in the lead and carried that through till the swim exit with a time of 8.16. I had only put about 6-8seconds on the 2nd athlete. This gave me time to relax and concentrate on having a smooth transition. I jumped on my bike and felt no power. I nearly missed a group of 3 athletes coming passed me attempting for a break away, but the chase pack was just too strong on the day and caught us after about 3km. The cycle route was very dangerous and one of my main goals was just to stay on my bike and get into transition safely. I also stuck to my other goal which was to conserve as much energy and that was to just stick in the front pack and do no work on the front end. After the fastest cycle split of the entire World Champs the front pack of juniors came into transition after 26minutes for 19.08km. I had one of my worst transitions, put my foot in my shoe and bent my toes sideways so I had to take it off and put it back on again. At the end I came out of transition about top 20. I wasn’t in good form and having my stomach turn upside down 3 nights before I knew it was going to be a painful run. I was literally “running on empty”. after 2.5km I saw I had a 15second penalty for a reason I am still unsure of. This was where I lost many positions. I gave the final 2.5km all I had and finished 51st and collapsed after the finish line.

I was really proud of myself just to finish the biggest race of the year and got loads of experience under my belt. From now onwards its time to rest, mentally and physically so when its time to start training I will be itching to get back into it. Also its perfect timing to sort out my shins and get ready for standard distance triathlons. I’m moving up to the big boys now. Bring them on!

Here is a 5minute video of the junior men’s race. Watch me come out the water and transition in the lead! and a little on the bike if you notice.

Just click here!

On the 2nd of August the High Performance squad came together at O.R Tambo International Airport. We departed

from there and after 2 flights, a bus ride from Venice, Italy to Radovljica, Slovenia and 28 hours of travelling we arrived at our European home for our 6week stay. My first word when we arrived in our home town was “WOW”. We were surrounded by mountains, everything was just so clean and organised and such a different scenery. We stayed in a cosy house, girls upstairs and boys downstairs. Our room was plain and simple, two beds and a big cupboard. The girls rooms were a little better because they had a TV in their rooms and a nice big lounge to chill in. well we spent a lot of time up there anyway watching movies.

I kicked off training that next day with a swim. From our house we only had to walk 500m to this top class pool arena. Better then anything I have seen in South Africa, BUT there wasn’t a stadium?? That afternoon we had a jog to the track that was just behind the pool. Now I’m thinking they have all these facilities and it’s a really small town. We get there and it’s a brand new tartan track, still busy working on it, ALSO no stadium?? Purely for training I would guess. They obviously look after their national athletes and provide them with a facility purely for training in good conditions. I wish I could train THERE! Cycling for me was the most enjoyable by far. One route which we did every Tuesday morning went through two very big mountains, they were so close it felt like you could just reach out and touch it and so big you felt as if you an ant finding their way through a deep crack in the ground. It was truly amazing and I was so blessed to be training in these conditions. It only made me want to train more!

There was one thing I needed getting use to and that was washing dishes and cooking food. Yes cooking for the entire team of 13 people. Luckily we didn’t have to do it ourselves so we were put into groups of three and each group gets a chance to cook dinner and wash dishes that day. I joined up with Theo Blignaut and Carlyn Fisher. We called ourselves team HTC (Henri, Theo, Carlyn). First time was very challenging, I have no cooking sense and just had to do the chopping and setting the table out. The food we made came out tasty but it only got better from there, our food just got more and more delicious and I started getting more involved in the cooking part. By the last 2 weeks teams started getting competitive (typical athletes) and wanted to see who makes the best dinner so we were eating really good and tasty food. I can at least say I learnt a new skill which doesn’t involve triathlon. Washing the dishes wasn’t fun at all but when you work as a team it goes by quickly. Carlyn would do the scrubbing, I would do the rinsing and theo would do the drying and packing away. Now that’s TEAM WORK.

The weather in Europe is a lot different to the weather in SA. When we first got there it was warm and humid, but only for a few days. It would mostly be overcast, luckily no rain. What surprised me the most was on one Saturday a storm came from no where and the weather from there turned upside down. The next day we look at the mountains around us and there was SNOW on the mountain tops, but its summer?? Temperature went from high twenties down to below 10 degrees. I remember the cycle we had to do when it was that cold, it felt like mid winter in Pretoria. Colder than winter here in Durban. Wow, didn’t expect that but next time I will be prepared!

My favourite training session believe it or not was the one where I hurt the most. It was the most painful experience I’ve ever had. It was a 42km ride to the mountain pass and then 9km of SOLID climbing. Average gradient was 14% and sometimes getting up to 17%! Climbed from 800m to 1600m. It was so steep around the corners they had to put cobble stones instead of tar which only makes it more dangerous when coming back down. You know you at a high altitude when the temperature drops like 10 degrees. I was starting to get cold and I was climbing?? We reached the summit and we couldn’t stick around for too long otherwise we would probably get hyperthermia going down. From what I got to see there were hundreds of sheep up top there and could see it was a long way down! When we got back down and about 38km back home the heavens opened and gave everything it had at us. It wasn’t only raining but also hailing, the wind made things 10x harder making the hail hit us harder which means more pain and almost blowing us off our bikes. I can say it was the most dangerous cycle I’ve ever had.

Tuesday 7th September 5am we departed from our base home and 7 hours later arrived in Budapest, Hungary for the World Championships.

Monthly Archives: September 2010

World Championships, Budapest

Living in Europe