Modern Athlete Magazine Issue 102, January 2018 | Page 31

DARE TO TRI
Gearing up for
IRONMAN 70.3
With Ironman 70.3 Buffalo City taking place on 28 January, most of our DARE TO TRI Academy athletes will be getting
ready for the trip to East London, so we thought this would be a good time to remind them how far they’ve come, with a
trip down memory lane through some of Coach Derick Marcisz’s weekly newsletters. Pay special attention to Shandene
van der Walt’s progress…
16 October…
Well done DTT athletes that competed at Global 11, including
Russel Bunnell (2h58m37s – PB and sub 3hour!), Carlos de
Oliveira (3h22m43s) and Augusta Saunders (3h35m04s).
Meanwhile, it was a great weekend of group training! We
had athletes running with Jeppe on Saturday morning, and a
few managed to get in an open water swim at Bass Lake on
Saturday afternoon. Sunday we did a long ride from Rietvlei
and again we had to contend with a major headwind in the
second part of the ride. Some of us rode 66km and the rest of
the group managed around 78km.
One of the joys of being a coach is seeing how athletes
progress – especially novices – and it was really fantastic to
see Shandene van der Walt finishing her longest ride of 66km.
Less than one month ago she had not yet ridden her bike on
the “open roads” and was still learning all about changing
gears! Well done, Shandene!
14 November…
Well done to all DTT athletes that competed at the Trinity Triathlon event at
Germiston Lake on Sunday, and thank you to David Luppnow for taking the DTT
gazebo to the race. From all the pics I saw on WhatsApp and Facebook, it looks
like a good time was had by all! In particular, Toby Hone and Shandene van der
Walt finished their first ever triathlons on Sunday. Welcome to the addictive sport of
triathlon!
20 November…
Well done to all DTT athletes that participated in the 947 Cycle Challenge. It was
HOT just marshalling at the start, so I can imagine it was a very hot and windy ride!
Well done to the 13 DTT finishers, with Toby Hone the fastest in a good time of
3h13m36s. Meanwhile, we also had a few DTT athletes doing 5150 Germiston – for
a change a sunny day, but windy on the bike, as usual. Well done to Russell Bunnell
(2h55m19s), Louis Coetzee (3h19m38s) and Werner Husi (3h55m51s and first in
the 65-69 age group!), and Shandene van der Walt did her second triathlon in a
week – the Fun Tri in 1h40m15s. Well done, DTT team!
You should sign up for DTT too!
The current DTT season is well underway as we build up to Ironman 70.3 Buffalo City, but then the focus will
turn to the full Ironman SA in Port Elizabeth and Ironman 70.3 Durban, so if you are interested in joining the
DARE TO TRI programme, go to https://daretotri.canbook.me/dtt-2017.
This is an affordable and manageable training programme that fits in with your family/social and work
commitments. You will receive personalised coaching and can join coached weekend group training sessions,
and you cannot get this level of coaching at such a low cost anywhere else! The question is, do
you Dare to Tri?
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