“ Some races you conquer, others conquer you. Standing on the Samla 100 start line, I wondered which this would be.”
By the time the finish line came into view six and a half hours later, it was clear who was calling the shots in the Qatari desert – South Africa’ s own Brad Weiss.
Staged against the sweeping sand dunes of southern Qatar, the Samla 100 is a gruelling 100km race across four disciplines. There’ s a 3km swim, 21km run, 22km cycle, 4km kayak, and then athletes are back on the bike for a 22km cycle and a final 28km run, all to be completed within a strict 12-hour cutoff.
In its first year open to international professionals, the event attracted a strong field thanks to a $ 50,000 winner’ s cheque, with Weiss delivering an impressive performance to win in 6 hours 29 minutes and 12 seconds, managing to hold off a massive challenge from compatriot and Olympic medallist Henri Schoeman, who finished second, seven minutes later.
Weiss is a four-time IRONMAN 70.3 champion and a two-time XTERRA world champion, but Samla presented a different challenge entirely – much of it mental.
“ Coming from a long history of endurance participation and endurance sport in general, I think I ' ve built up quite a resilient mindset just through exposure to sport I guess.
“ In preparation for this event specifically, and actually with every race that I do, I do a lot of visualisation, trying to sort of envision how the race is going to play out. I go through each segment,” he explained.
Kayaking was something relatively new for
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Brad
Brad Weiss Voice note 2 01:45
Weiss, who received some pre-race tips from his wife, who has done far more paddling than he has. It turned out to be one of the sections he enjoyed the most.
“ I didn ' t think it was going to be sort of a race-defining section of the race … So I actually only did one paddle leading into the event,” he admitted.
“ But I think the biggest thing that I could take away is that I ' m quite versatile as an athlete and quite resilient to change and I really like going into the unknown and things being thrown at you during a race that everybody has to adapt and survive a little bit."
Meanwhile, the defining stretch of the race came on the final 28km run.
By then, Weiss had already swum, cycled, paddled and run more than 70km. He was running on unfamiliar ground in more ways than one.
“ Into the final run of the race, I was definitely entering a territory that I ' d never been to. The furthest I ' d run till that point was 42km … And while the two run segments were broken up in this race … ultimately you ' re still running 49 kilometres through the desert of Qatar.”
And running through the desert meant dealing with soft sand.
“ I felt pretty in control for most of the day. I think halfway through the second run, I got to about 14km and still had 14km to go and went through a bit of a dark patch. There was a lot of soft sand in the beginning, and I wasn ' t quite mentally prepared for that … I really started to battle some demons there. But was pretty proud to have to fight and get out the other side unscathed.”
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As the kilometres ticked down, fellow South African Schoeman closed the gap. With limited visibility across the course, Weiss had to simply put his head down and fight to the finish.
“ Henri Schoeman was chasing me down quite aggressively and I think he got to within two minutes at one point, so I really had to keep it together and stay focused and keep pushing all the way to the end,” explained Weiss.
“ I definitely started to fight through some dark patches at the end, but just knowing that the end was in sight was very special, to try and take that victory, so that definitely pushed me really hard to get to the finish line. And of course, the prize cheque at the end of the day, you know, ultimately we do this for a living and there was a healthy paycheque on the finish line which kept me very focused throughout the day."
For Weiss, Samla now sits among the standout victories of his career, particularly considering the calibre of athletes who took part and the fact that he didn’ t have very long to prepare for the brutal challenge.
“ Of all my triathlon victories, this one definitely ranks right up there … it was a really wonderful racing experience and … one that I truly treasure and look forward to going back to in 2027 to try and defend my title.
“ Heading into the event, I was very confident that I could be competitive. I didn ' t know exactly how my body would stand up to that amount of running, but I knew that my preparation had gone pretty well and I had ticked all the boxes that I wanted to.
“ Thankfully the dice fell my way and I managed to get one over Henri, but he really pushed me all the way to the finish line and getting a onetwo for South Africa was just the cherry on top of a very special day."
Brad Weiss Voice note 3 01:27
Because the Samla community surprised me in the best way, I ' m extending a special coaching offer to 10 athletes: a free month of coaching to any Samla participants or those who followed along and are inspired to race next year. I offer different tiers of coaching packages.
Click here to learn more and apply
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