Katherine, a former clinical midwife specializing in women with HIV and current volunteer consultant at m2m, convinced me to participate in her running club’s half-marathon race a few weeks ago. I was a little afraid what running 13 miles was going to be like after not having done much exercising in Namibia, Stellenbosch, etc. (as you can imagine), but luckily it worked out ok in the end.
The race was held in Constantia, the wineland suburb of Cape Town. That’s right – drive a mere 15 minutes beyond our apartment and you become surrounded by beautiful rolling vineyards situated along the foothills of the mountains. Not bad! Runners were allowed special access to the vineyards (Groot Constantia, Klein Constantia, and Buitenverwagting) for the race, and it was honestly the most beautiful run I have ever been on. (Random fact: Groot Constantia is the oldest wine farm in South Africa, founded in 1685.) Of course the rolling vineyards and views of the valley come at a price – I have also never done so much uphill before, in a race nonetheless. The first 7k were pretty much straight uphill, in fact. Another complicating factor was that the race started at 6:30am, and Wenli and I arrived about an hour early to help out. In the end I couldn’t complain too much, however, as the morning light made the scenery all the more beautiful. Despite everything (the hills, the earliness, the lack of training) it went pretty well and I met my goal of not having to stop at all. I finished in just under 1:50 which I was pretty happy about because the course was so tough. Anyway, if I counted through the race results correctly, I came in #219 of 1500, or #31 of roughly 635 women. Never before have I felt so accomplished by 8:30am on a Sunday morning, haha!
After needing to wait a few days for feeling to return to my thigh muscles (seriously, they were so sore I thought they might have just disintegrated – perhaps an indication that hill training would a be useful addition to my workouts) and trying to deal with an annoying foot pain, I now have one new pair of running shoes to my name and am getting excited about the prospect of more races to come. Turns out Cape Town is full of runners and running clubs and there are races somewhere almost every weekend, so hopefully I can start doing more.
FYI, I stole these pictures from the race website (http://www.vob.co.za/_race_graperun.asp). It’s way too hard to think about taking photos/carrying a camera while running 21k but I wanted to give you an idea of how beautiful it was!
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