And I Made It...

OK, so today was the Canola Carnival 21 km that I was going on about for the past couple for days!!!  I made it, but also just barely...

Slept over in town last night and ran into some old friends.  One thing lead to another and I finally got to bed a few hours too late and a couple of drinks too many ;-)  That was all still well and fine until one of the "house mate's" phone started ringing about once every 15 minutes from about 3:00 am.  That finally stopped around 4:30 am.

Some sleep finally!!!  Which was not to last...  At around 5:30 am one of the other guys that stayed over, had to go out to his dad's farm to start milking!!!

A few more minutes of sleep....  And then the alarm went off at 6:30 am.  So I drag myself off the couch, head pounding and feeling none too fresh!!!  Take a shower, dress, leave for the starting point.

At the starting point, semi-confusion reigns.  It's about 30 minutes before the race is scheduled to start, but they're still setting up the starting point banners.  And the registration point is a few hundred meters down a side street from the starting point.  So down the street I go to fetch my goody bag (the joys of preregistering via the internet), and head back to the house to go drop off the goody bag, which mercifully, is less then a 100 meters from the starting point.

As starting time (8:00 am) approaches, they make an announcement that there's a delay, since a lot of people that decided to drive through the morning only instead of the previous night already, are stuck in thick mist along the roads.

So 'round about 8:30 am the shot finally goes and we're off, my head pounding in alternate beats to my footfall.  The first couple of kilometers is run through the town and everything seems to be hunky dory...  After a few kilometers, as we start leaving Swellendam and heading into the foothills of the mountain, the endorphins start to kick in and the headache starts to subside.

Now, this is were the fun and games start!!!  Next time they advertise a race as "a scenic race, run mostly on gravel roads" I'll read it as "up and down mountains and hills with thousands of switchbacks"!!!  You'll run 2 or so kilometers and then you go round a bend and it looks as if you're finally headed back towards town... But that's not to be.  A few kilometers further on, you go round another bend...  And head straight back into the mountains...  And up a hill!!!

But I made it.  It was slow going and it took me a whole 2 hours, 40 minutes to finish.  But taking into account that I was basically down with flu for the last 2 weeks and didn't run a single kilometer, I still feel that it ain't a half bad time.

So, now some more prep work for the Potberg race in 2 weeks.  Hopefully they've changed the route, because turning around at the halfway mark is a bit of a demotivator...