PEOPLE » DONOVAN GELDENHUYS
AFRICA’S
AMATEUR
CHAMPION!
Hard-working elite amateur triathlete
DONOVAN GELDENHUYS
fina nai ed the e ent he d been orking so
hard to ards he as the first age grou er
home at IRONMAN African ham ionshi and
in the to 0 o era . Paul Ingpen quizzed him
on his monster bui d u and ho triath on
brings ba ance into his bus ife.
fter a monster build-up
and finely tuned training
plan, you executed the
inevitable amateur
category decimation a few weeks
ago. Tell us about your biggest day
out. I woke up feeling very relaxed and
fresh. My nutrition plan was worked out
days in advance. Breakfast down to every
1g of the 900g of carbs I had during my
race was documented and well known.
All my equipment was in great condition
and I knew I had done everything I could
to prepare – it was now down to a strong
mind game.
I always swim hard to get to the front
and from there dictate the race on the
bike. But with the swim shortened, I
knew I wouldn’t have my normal gap.
Early on in the bike, a group of five came
together to hunt down top Norwegian
amateur Lars Petter Stormo who was the
lone wolf out front. He was the person I
had to beat to win my AG. The first lap
was pretty uneventful but on the second,
70
at about 110km, Mark Pellew decided
to go solo on the fast tailwind section
along the beachfront and slowly the
group broke up. I was climbing really well
and feeling great. At turnaround I timed
that Stormo was 1:30 ahead and Mark
around 30 seconds. I decided to use the
few matches my coach had given me to
close the gap to Mark before we hit the
headwind section, which I managed to
do fairly quickly. I was feeling good so
I decided to ride at the top end of my
power curve until the top of the climb
and see if I couldn’t maybe, just maybe,
close the gap to Stormo. As I started
climbing from Grassroof I saw him up
ahead and, as we crested the last hill, I
pushed hard to take the lead. I got to T2
with about a 45-second gap.
I quickly fell into my stride and race
pace but unfortunately I had to do a
quick pitstop 2km into the run. As I came
out of the loo, I merged with Stormo who
was running with one of the pro men.
They were running 3:50/km and I knew
it would be suicide for me to try going
with them. I stuck to coach’s orders and
slowly ticked off the kilometres at 4:15/
km. Not once during the first 30km did
I think I would even get close to the lead
again, so I was purely running to get
the best marathon I could possibly get
on the day. The support on the run was
insane, magical actually. I had Richard
Lawrie on the sidelines shouting splits at
me and hundreds of people screaming
my name, together with my wife, kids
and parents. Every lap was awesome!
As I started to head towards lap 4,
someone shouted that the gap had
come down to 1 minute. This gave me
an immediate adrenaline rush. It was a
long push into a headwind and I thought
to give it a nice big push for 2-3km to
see if I could possibly get to the leader.
At 32km I was on his heels. I was running
side by side with one of the world’s best
age groupers, potentially fighting for
overall victory at African Champs. I had
to cage the emotions, it was unreal.