BIRTHDAY 2014

Some people sleep late on their birthday, me on the other hand... I was up at 05h00 to meet a friend at Constantia Nek. Last year Ake had joined me for 3 hours of mountain trail running... This year I didn't have that sort of time as the day was full, in fact the weekend was full and it was only Thursday!

While I had asked a couple of guys if they had wanted to join me only Katya found the time. (It could have been the early morning or the fact that it was a week day, I don't know!)

It was such a perfect morning we could have met at 05h00, the mountain was ready for us... We weren't the only ones up there as we caught someone else venturing out before the rest of the Mother City woke!

the first bit of sun!

The top was deserted and full of morning magic, will have to do this again...

I would have love to have spent 3-4 hours exploring every single track again, but my day was not ending there I had places to go and people to see...

Katya took the picture...

By 09h30 I was home after fulling the car with petrol and a case of beer! That is not all the bags were packed and I was infront of the PC...

Entries for the Two Oceans trail opened at 10h00 and in order to get an entry you need to be sitting there waiting for the site to open.

With the entry confirmed we packed the bags and the dogs and headed out to the wine country for a few days...

Vineyards forever...

We only stopped at 4 farms before reaching Mcgregor the little town we were staying at for a couple of nights.

Hurry up with the key

Since it wasn't a hot evening, and with the cloud cover and few drops of rain had cooled it down enough to really settle in for the night...

What more could a man want?

The next morning started like any other morning which doesn't include work...

Running on the mountain

I had to go looking for trails to run on and I was lucky to end up on top for the mountain... it wasn't a long run, but just enough to stretch the legs and shake out the cobwebs befor we hit the wine farms again...

Let's go wine tasting!

7 wine farms later it was time to head back to our little cottage...

OK I took this as we were leaving in the morning

Come Saturday mornng and it was time to drive the 200km home so there wasn't time to explore the other mountains around Mcgregor. Don't worry I did have time to head out for a run, but the the sun rising and the thermoneter heading to 30*c I didn't want to be out there for more than an hour... I stuck to a gravel road and after a couple of km decided that since we had a couple of friends coming over that evening I had better earn the right to eat... So I upped the pace and ran 6km tempo before taking a single track back to the cottage!

It was after 13h00 when we got home (maybe we shouldn't have stopped at another wine farm!) and with guests arriving from 18h30 there was no time to sit around... While Dawn hit the shops for a few things I headed for the kitchen!

Remember I had bought beer before leaving? Well other than needing a couple of beers to drink I also make a beer bread...

It didn't last long