Monday, December 23, 2013

WINTER IS ON THE WAY

With the longest day now behind us, the days are getting short and short. Summer is a thing of the past and Winter is on the way...

Lucky for us here in Cape Town the weather should start to improve with the Summer wind starting to drop off. Isn't this just the best time of year? So many public holiday and half the world is on leave, in fact half the world is always on leave!!! Me on the other hand, I love being at the office over this time of the year, the roads are quiet and the phone almost never rings. So I find I can get a lot more work done and I even get the leave work early for time to time... Enough about work, I'm here to tell you about running!

Public holidays alway shout long run, long run on the mountain, and last Monday was no different. The I listen carefully to the call of the mountain and plan a route as to cover the ground I'm called too...

Vlakenberg was shouting my name, but the truth be told the route I started to think about would ahve killed me, it was up, down, up, along, up, down, up, down, and I would have being out for long over 3 hours. At this time of the year my body is pretty worn-out so I changed the plan to Up, Down out and back, up, down, with 2 hours being the mark. Then I put a call out to a couple of friends and while most had plans (there was another 10km race), one of my star lady runners joined me.
Making it look easy
It was her first time on the mountain and she made it look easy, if I take she up a couple more times she will become quite the trail runner!!!

One of the reasons I didn't run the race on the Monday, was there was another evening 10 on the Wednesday, and 3 10s in week would have just been too much. I was at the Waterfront for the midweek 10 and while I thought I could find myself running hard I wasn't going the aim at a time. While making my way to the startlineI saw a couple of the 40+ guys and with 3 guys who can kick my fat ass any day of the week, and a 4th whom I know would make me run harder than I wanted, I decided to pace a friend...

38:30 was his target, and with wind to think about I set the pace at 19:00 for the first 5 along us to slow in the 2nd half.
1km was easy and while we had start easy we passed the mark spot on and he was looking good, 2km and 3 and he was still there, but I could see he was starting to work a bit.
19:02 at 5km and he was still with me... 6km and while we had caught a couple more people he was not a happy camper!!! By 7km he was toast, but I was still hopefull...
Remember we had a little time in the bag for the 38:30, but now the time was slipping away... and while I know I could pick the pace up it wasn't about me, so I kept hanging back to help him keep going, then with 1km to go I felt him to come home in 39:00 while I fought a bit of wind at the end to finish in 38:40.

Good thing I'm so fat or the wind would have had me!
I was happy with my last km and my friend was happy with the 39:00 he had run...

The week again find me out and about, but this time round it was the slopes of Devils...

My team mate Eddie making it look easy...
It wasn't all sitting around and smiling at the view, some of it was hard work...

It was a long climb...
2hour 20 later and we had covered all of 22km (only 750m climb) and found ourselves back at the cars... 

I have a couple of days of work as the Office closes so any guesses as to where I plan to get my running done?

Have a great Chrismas, more from me in the New Year.

3 comments:

  1. The days might be getting shorter but there's still a lot of summer to get through. It's tough running here in summer with the morning temperatures rarely under 22C and the humidity up around 80-90%. But on the up side - if you survive running through summer it makes winter running feel so easy.

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  2. Nice running CD and nice pictures. Wish someone could pull me through 10K in 39.00! Have a cracking 2014. All the best....

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  3. Looks like you have a great trail running partner there! :)
    Great job in your race.. not thinking you look fat, just strong and sturdy.
    Wishing you the best in 2014, wherever the running takes you!

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