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Random Ramblings On A Sunday Morning

Yesterday, I got a new pair of running shoes. In a dramatic departure to the norm, I did not get New Balance – the shoes I have insisted on running in right from the start. Instead, I got Newtons, which are designed to help runners improve their form. These shoes are going to change the way I run. My heel-striking days will be over, and I will become very aware of my calf muscles.

I will have to break the shoes in gradually, and as I sit here on a Sunday morning – the day of my long run – I have to resist the temptation to put the shoes on and take them for a 10K run.

I developed an interest in running long before I actually took it up. That is to say, I always enjoyed watching it, even if I was too lazy to get off my butt and do it. As a teenager, a prominent day in my annual calendar was the annual Comrades Marathon, an 89km run between the South African cities of Durban and Pietermaritzburg.

On Comrades Day, my dad and I would be up drinking coffee by five in the morning. We would turn on the TV to watch the pre-race goings on, wondering what the start-line energy must be like for such a huge event. Then we would watch the start, and spend the morning trying to predict how long it would take Bruce Fordyce to win. That he would win was never in question. He won the Comrades a record nine times. Eight of the wins were in consecutive years.

While Dad and I were glued to the TV, Mom would be making a huge batch of cookies in the kitchen, relishing the opportunity to bake without us hanging around asking why there weren’t any cookies yet.

After the top ten  men and women crossed the finish line, Dad and I would drift away from the TV and do something else, but we would always return at about five in the evening, to watch the final half-hour of the race. By that time, hundreds of runners would still be out on the course, trying desperately to make it to the finish line before the twelve-hour cutoff. When the finishing siren went off, we would always feel the agony of the runners who had made it into the stadium, but just couldn’t get to the finish line. So near and yet so far. For some of them, a split second was all that stood between them and a medal.

I miss those days, when the Comrades was as much a day for me and my dad as it was a day for the runners to give themselves the ultimate test. Now, my Comrades experience is limited to what I can see on the Internet, which is not the same as curling up in front of the TV. My dad, who died seven years ago, is not around for me to chat to about the runners or whether the number of participants has perhaps become too large. There is no aroma of freshly baked cookies coming from the kitchen.

One thing hasn’t changed, though. As I am scouring the Internet for Comrades-related news, my dad is with me.

Just as he always is when I go running myself.

(Photo credit: Kirsten Doyle)

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2011 Running Season Is Off And Running

From left: Dave, Penny, me, Kim

It’s official! My 2011 racing season is underway! I kicked it off today with Harry’s Spring Run-Off – an 8km run in the hills of High Park. It’s a gorgeous run, really. You’d be hard-pressed to beat it for scenicness (yes, that is a word – doesn’t matter that I just made it up thirty seconds ago), but oh dear Lord, it’s hard. Especially if you’ve just emerged from a winter lean of runs, and it’s been mere days since you recovered from a bad cold.

What made this race different to most others that I have taken part in is that I ran with some fellow members of my running club, Kim and Penny, along with Penny’s boyfriend David, who is not technically a member of the club but is part of the furniture enough for us to regard him as such.

We all started together, but we separated fairly early in the race. Although I really enjoyed the fact that my running friends were there with me, I felt a need to run the actual race by myself. Running with someone else, I would have felt obligated to match their pace. Having just recovered from a cold, and in view of the fact that I need to do some work to regain form and speed, I wanted to run my own race, following a pacing strategy that would make sense to me.

I ran fairly easy for the first three kilometres, aided by a long downhill stretch. The downhill was followed fairly quickly by an uphill, which was not long as the downhill had been, but the gradient was steeper. After getting to the top of the hill, I was utterly spent – and I still had 5km to go.

Cripes, how was I going to do this?

Sheer grit and determination, same way I’ve completed many other races I’ve struggled in. I took it fairly easy for the next kilometre, and then I reached the magical halfway mark, which is a psychological wonder in any race. From this point forward, every step I took meant that the distance remaining was that much shorter than the distance elapsed. For the next 3km, the hills were rolling (up and down) but manageable.

Then…

1km to go…

The first half of the last kilometre started well enough, but then, with a mere 500 metres left, there was another hill to tackle. A nasty, NASTY one. You know the long downhill stretch I mentioned at the beginning of the race? It was the same hill. Only instead of going down, I had to go up. After having run for 7.5km. It was not pretty.

I made it up the hill (Determination? Stupidity? Act of God?), and as I reached the top I was about to stop and take a breather when I saw the finish line around the corner, maybe fifty metres away. Those fifty metres felt like about fifty miles, and when I crossed the finish line, I was never more grateful to be able to stop running.

I received my medal with gratitude, went to the food station and inhaled a banana, and went to a predetermined meeting spot to meet up with the others.

We finished the race with varying times, and happily made our way out of the park with our medals hanging around our necks – our badges of honour that proved to the world that we had earned the right to have aching legs and look like crap.

Was this race my best one? Not by a long shot. With a time of almost 57 minutes, my average pace was slower than it had been in over a year.

But I FINISHED, damnit! It was a hard race and I finished it!

And that, my friends, is good enough for me.