Power pair
Wild time for the Cookes
Adventure sports duo Jarryd and Keegan Cooke already have their sights set on the next instalment of the Torpedo SwimRun after they claimed second place at the “Wild” race in Wilderness at the weekend.
The brothers, who took third place in the same event in 2018, said they had learnt a lot from their experiences in that race.
They are already planning to return to Cape Town for the Torpedo SwimRun Cape in November.
The race, held on September 13 and 14, featured a 6km prologue before the main 26km race on Saturday.
The main race was made up of five run segments totalling 17km, four 1km swim segments in addition to a 5km “swamble”, a combination of swimming and climbing.
Jarryd said on Wednesday they had come up with some new tactics to have a more efficient race.
“The biggest change we made was in the swim, where we decided that I would swim without my shoes, in order to get the kick going and help us to speed up a bit in the water.
“So that made it a lot easier and helped us make our way through the field.
“Getting this placing was a great achievement for us.
“We worked hard on both the swim and run sections, but it is also about how much you put in.
“I didn’t get too much training in as opposed to Keegan, but I would say we did quite well in the end,” Jarryd said.
Having taken a wrong turn during the 2018 race, which resulted in them losing a bit of time and ultimately ended their push for first, Jarryd said there had been no mishaps of that nature this time as they rallied to push to the finish.
“Having raced it for a second time now, we have learnt our lessons,” he said.
“We stopped at all the nutrition stops just to fuel up as much as we could, and we just put the pedal to the metal in the last 10km so, granted our past performances, I definitely think we are capable of winning this race.”
Keegan said they had been well aware of the toughness of the race, but they had been prepared for whatever the course had to offer.
“Our strategy for the Friday was to go hard on the prologue and try to put some time on our opponents,” he said.
“Our prologue was not as fast as ours last year, but it still put us in a decent position heading into the main race on Saturday.
“We knew the Kaaimans would be one of the main factors of the race.
“We learnt last year that the lines you take can be very important, so we found the right line through there, and it was a lot quicker.”
Keegan said while nothing was set in stone, doing the Torpedo SwimRun Cape was on the cards, provided their schedules were in sync around race time. “It is definitely something we have discussed and we are ready to have another crack at the race, but we would first need to ensure there are no clashes in our schedules, and also that we can get some time to put in some solid training sessions together,” he said.