Elands Valley Marathon…Final Countdown

I must say this week seems to just suddenly be here. 20 March was still far away not so long ago. Now suddenly it’s 5 days to go! Am I ready? I think so, as ready as can be anyway. My mind is ready for a marathon and that wins a big part of the battle already. I’ve got no injuries or niggles so the body seems to be ready as well.

The Elands Valley Marathon starts at the station in the town of Waterval Boven. Waterval Boven is nestled in the Drakensberg Mountains on the fringe of the escarpment, at the foot of the southern hills in Mpumalanga. It is a beautiful place and the Elands River and waterfall make it popular with tourists. It is also famous amongst rock climbers.

 

The marathon starts in Waterval Boven and runs down the escarpment next to the Elands River, East on the road to Mozambique. The run goes through the Waterval Boven tunnel and passes one of the area’s main tourist attractions, the waterfall and old railway tunnel. Runners go through Waterval Onder and the race finishes at the Sappi training grounds at Ndogwana.

We’ll be camping at Elandskrans holiday resort for the weekend as Monday is a public holiday in South Africa. I’m looking forward to the weekend and run. I ran this marathon in 1997 and it’ll be good to be back. I’m going for a relaxed run and just want to finish under 5 hours.

I ran a relaxed 21km yesterday and I’m resting today. I’m glad to say I can’t even feel I ran yesterday. My legs are ready for longer runs. I’ll run 9km tomorrow, 6km Wednesday and 5km Thursday. Friday is rest and travel day. Saturday at 06:00 the marathon starts.

Now to get through the week’s work and stay sane. I’ll be busy at work which is definitely a good thing. Have a good week everyone!

Gadgets and Goodies

Although I love technology I’m not very big on gadgets. When it comes to running I’m not into gadgets at all. No heart rate monitors or Garmins or fancy watches or iPods for me. I run with my stop watch that has two settings…Start & Stop.

The table below appeared in the January 2010 edition of the South African Runner’s World. According to that I’m close to being an old timer with some of the ultra guy qualities added. I really enjoyed reading this table and can relate well to being an ultra guy old timer. I certainly have a lack of gadgets and run in old shirst!

At least I’ve worked through my 1980’s and early 1990’s t-shirts. I currently run in my 1998 t-shirts, working my way through the piles of t-shirts from races all over.

One area where I’ve upgraded my old timer status is the no gadgets area. I’ve replaced my water bottle with a hydration pack for the longer runs.

The most recent upgrade is a running belt to carry my gels and other goodies on long runs. I’ve been using these plastic bags that I pin to my shorts. They work fine, but the newer bags (I use money bags from the banks) are smaller than and not as strong as the older ones. So I decided to finally get myself a proper runner’s belt.

So am I moving into the age of gadgets and goodies? Maybe a little, but I’m very far from any electronic gadget. For now I’m still happy being an old timer.

Ryan Sandes

I’m a proud South African and South Africans are very proud of their top desert runner, Ryan Sandes. He is currently running in the Atacama Desert Race in Chile and won day 1, 2 and day 3. Have a look at Ryan's blog and website. Go Ryan!

Photo by RacingThePlanet

Photo by RacingThePlanet

Photo by RacingThePlanet

Photo by RacingThePlanet

What was my worst running moment?

This post is in reply to Christina’s running question challenge.

Question:
What was your worst running moment?

Answer:
My worst running moment by far was when a very close friend of mine was hit and killed by a car while we were on a club run in 1999. The driver skipped a red light and swerved to avoid another car. He hit our friend instead and she died on the scene. I can’t even describe what went through my head. It was just awful and it took a long time for all of us to get over the shock. It was the worst day of my life. RIP Angel.

Downed by a stomach bug

If there is one thing that always floors me completely it’s a stomach bug. Unfortunately that is exactly what got me last week. I started feeling a bit miserable on Thursday and from Friday to Sunday it was man down with cramps right through my digestive system.

I’m feeling better today and hope to run again tomorrow morning. I’ll decide about that tonight and make a final decision when I wake up Tuesday morning. Luckily I’m in a taper phase anyway so I’m not worried too much. As long as I recover completely during this week everything should still be fine for my marathon on 20 March. I think running less than planned during a taper period is actually a good thing and may result in a better race. That is if training up to the taper went well and I’m feeling pretty good about that.

So for now the good news is that I seem to be recovering well and should be running as normal from tomorrow onwards. With 12 days to go to the marathon I hope this stomach bug was the last (and only) bump in the road.

When I’m Not Running

I’m sure all runners at some point have this remark made to them by some non-running person: “You need to get a life…”, when the person learns about some run or race you’ve done or are planning to do. I get this quite often and my first thought is always that it’s actually the other way round. This person needs a life!

My life is full, with or without running, but running and being in shape makes me cope so much better with my full life. Someone at work made this comment yesterday when he heard that I was up at 3:30 on Sunday morning because I wanted to do a long training run. I don’t respond to this anymore, but thought it might be a good idea to post about some of the things I do when I’m not running.

So here it is! Some non-running stuff I do…

I’m a software engineer and work full time as a software performance tester. In short this means I test software for performance and mainly performance under load. For example I test Internet Banking for banks and see if 1.5 mil people can use the software at the same time at the end of the month. I spend a lot of my time working through graphs like this. This is great as I’m a stats fanatic!

I’m passionate about software and software testing and I write and publish articles and papers on a regular basis and give presentations and talks at seminars, user groups and workshops often.

I enjoy a lot of good times with my son. He will be 9 on 12 March. We like to watch DVD’s and play computer games together when the weather doesn’t allow us to be outside, but if at all possible we’ll be outdoors.

I spend many hours in my garden. I was born with very green fingers. Any plant I touch grows well!

I love taking photos of the flowers in my garden.

I love trains and model trains. I’m building a model train layout and do this often when I want or need to relax.

I keep and breed tropical fish

I have 3 dogs and 3 cats.

We do lots of hiking on trails wherever we are.

I’m an enthusiastic bird watcher.

Between all of this I love to run…a lot.

I’d like to do much more, but I don’t have time as my life is full.

Cutting back and tapering for my marathon

I’ve reached the peak of my marathon training and now enter a three week taper/cutback period. Reading other blogs one thing is certain, not many runners enjoy the taper period. Aren’t we stupid? We all know how good it is for us, but still we don’t like it. I ran 305.6km in January and 293km in Feb. These legs are happy there’s tapering coming up. They need (and deserve) the rest. It’s just difficult to convince my mind how much rest.

So what do I do to get through the three weeks? I handle the first two weeks by cutting back but still run my normal 6 days per week. I also include two races which I’ll just run comfortably. A half marathon the first Sunday and a 15km the second Sunday. This way I should still feel as if I’m just running as normal and not really tapering. Remember I’m actually training for some ultras and the marathon is just a stepping stone in the buildup process. The only reason I’m resting up a bit before this marathon is because I want to use it to qualify for the Comrades marathon. So it is important to have a good run. If it wasn’t for the qualifying, I wouldn’t taper and use the marathon as a LSD run.

The third week will be a proper taper week with complete rest the two days before the marathon. My three taper weeks will be as follow:

Week 1
Mon: Rest
Tue: 9km
Wed: 15.1km
Thu: 9km
Fri: 12.2km
Sat: 5km
Sun: 21.1km (Vaal Half Marathon)

Week 2
Mon: Rest
Tue: 9km
Wed: 15.1km
Thu: 9km
Fri: 12.2km
Sat: 5km
Sun: 15km (Alberton 15km)

Week 3
Mon: Rest
Tue: 9km
Wed: 6km
Thu: Rest
Fri: Rest
Sat: 42.2km (Elands Valley Marathon)
Sun: Rest

This is still a fairly busy schedule and I think this should get me through the taper thing without too much frustration.