PEOPLE » DONOVAN GELDENHUYS
tank’ from the movie Old School.
In terms of training, for this past
IRONMAN I really put in a big effort and
averaged around 20 hours a week, with
some of my biggest weeks topping out at
around 24 hours – at which point I really
battled to keep balance in my life. Once I
go over 20 hours something has to give,
be it my attention to my family or my job,
and I don’t like that. For 70.3 training
blocks I will aim for 16-18 hours a week,
which is sufficient if you work smart.
Typically I try to do a minimum of
four 4km swims a week, with some of the
bigger weeks being five swims totalling
around 20-22km.
The biking I do mostly indoors, so it’s
not focussed on mileage, more on time.
During my big weeks, I will do two very
race-specific focused sets, either VO2
max or threshold sessions of two hours
each. I also do an outdoor recovery ride of
01:30, which I use to connect with friends.
Then I do a key long ride. Further out from
race day this will be just four hours easy
for 70.3, or six hours for IRONMAN, but as
race day approaches, the long rides will
include some race-specific work.
With my change in coaches, my focus
has really been the run. For IRONMAN I
had many weeks where I ran in excess of
100km a week. I ran pretty much six days
a week. Two of the runs were just easy
hilly runs, typically 40min to 60min, three
sessions were focused on race-specific
work, and then one long run. My biggest
run day for IRONMAN was 30 x 800m
plus 200m easy – including warm up and
warm down that session was 33km – in
PE PERFECT, from top: ecstatic
to take the overall AG win at
African Championship; taking
charge of the amateur pack.
the morning followed by a 10km race pace
second run in the evening, which with
warm up was 13km. So that was a 46km
run day, which is pretty big.
You’re known for playing open cards
on your training sessions. Are the
‘Wattbazooka’ posts designed to
intimidate your rivals or to inspire
you to deliver on the hype? What
keeps you so motivated? Triathlon is
three sports but, let’s be honest, everyone
wants to be the uber biker and push some
serious Wattage during the bike. Luckily
I managed to tone things down and have
learned to race my own race over the
years. Wattbazooka is just reference to the
bike leg, and in my experience, the one
leg you can improve the most no matter
how little talent you have. The bike was
my worse discipline by a landslide and
once I really committed to the discipline
I realised how much one can improve
just by focusing on it. The swim is very
technique driven and you can only
improve so much. Running I find is also
more technical with natural talent playing
a big role – and it’s not that easy to ramp
up running volumes because it can carry
quite a big risk of injury. Whereas with
biking, big bike-focused training blocks
are really low impact. If you are prepared
to suffer on the trainer you can really make
big gains and become the Wattbazooka
you always wanted to be!
My motivation comes from pushing
myself, testing how far I can take my body
without it ever taking over my life. It’s
important to have other interests so that
triathlon is not your only thing to go to
when you need distraction.
You’re naturally a big fella and have
worked hard to get lean and harness
your big engine. What would you say
is the secret to your success? I don’t
think I do much different to everyone else,
other than being extremely consistent. I
think I might have missed one scheduled
session in the last year. When time
presses and I have other things to do, I
might edit a planned session and shorten
it, but when something is planned I do it
in whatever shape or form. Also, being
bigger, I try to play to my strengths, which
is a pretty decent swim, hurt everyone
around me as much as I can on the bike
and hold on for the run, kind of like a
Starykowicz approach. That being said,
I have committed to becoming a better
runner. I managed a 02:56 marathon at
African Champs and the next step is a
01:18 half. For that, the only way is to run
lighter. For IRONMAN I managed to lose
3kg and felt awesome. I have gained all
the weight back, but my plan is to get
consistently lighter and see how I perform
then, but it’s a process and I love it!
What’s on your racing schedule for
2019? 2019 is Kona focused. I will do
IRONMAN 70.3 Durban and a few shorter
races to work on transitions and get some
intensity, but I will replicate my build-up for
IRONMAN SA for Kona, with a few tweaks
for heat, etc. I want to have a good first
experience so I’m going all in!
Tell us what got you into tri? If you
weren’t a triathlete, what competitive
sport would you do? Honestly, triathlon
started out of boredom. When I finished
studying in 2011 (three degrees, honours
and Chartered Accountancy), I didn’t
know what to do with myself. I seriously
had so much free time. I was used to
studying and researching for three to four
hours a day, then all of a sudden it was
gone. I used to get up at 4am and study
until 6am, and in the evenings I studied
from 8pm until 10pm when the kids and
wife were asleep. Two friends and I took up
the challenge to compete in an IRONMAN
in 2012 and we did it – all 98kg of me, still
smoking 30 cigarettes a day! Things were
less serious for a year or three, but soon
the bug bit properly and triathlon become
my new ‘studying’.
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