Our awesome sponsors ProSano, gave us GREAT long sleeved T's to wear, which made me very happy and a cap as well, great style, great quality. They also provided some great spot prizes for after the race. Their sponsorship helps to make this a great race, thanks ProSano :-)
I was helping out at the registration of Grand Masters - these are peeps of 60+ years who are doing the 10km run. What an inspiration they were, still running at their ages and in lots of cases getting awesome times too. One of my fav local runners, Vladimir Kotov also entered and won the race in his catagory. This guy is amazing, he just keeps going and almost seems to get better the older he gets LOL. I got my shoes from his shop in Century City and was very happy with his assesment and assistance in chosing shoes - and his prices are great too :-)
By this time I was starting to get nervous, as I was running the race too. Each person that registered at my table, was a reminder that I was going to be undertaking my second 10km race Eeeeeeekk. At 6.40am I had to leave my table to get ready for the race - it was now really a reality. So I took off my track pants and my nice ProSano T, got my USN sport drink and went to line up. My sisters-in-law, Tracy and Glenda were also doing the race, so I was chatting to them while waiting for the start.
And then the gun fired, I started my stopwatch and we were off. I let Tracy and Glenda go off in front of me, cause I'm nowhere near their level yet, they've been at this longer than I have. I had decided that I was gonna try do it in 1h20, but was a bit wishy washy in the beginning with regard to how I was gonna organize that. By about the 2km mark though, I had a plan. To get my 1h20, I knew at what time I needed to get to each km marker, so I decided that I would jog to each km marker and when I got there, I would walk for approx 2mins to recover, then jog to the next km marker.
LOL, my watch and those km markers became my friends and to get myself through it, I'd start taking to the km markers before I got to them (in my head of course, don't want those other runners to know I'm insane hehehe). So as I knew the 5km marker (for eg) was coming up, I'd start this conversation in my head "Where are you 5km marker, I know you're here somewhere. I'm getting to you, don't you be worried, I'll be there soon" etc etc. When I actually SPOTTED the marker the conversation would get more interesting hehehe "Oh there you are my angel, I see you, don't worry, I'll be with you soon, here I come..." All this said with a silly grin on my face cause I was so pleased to see the marker LOL. It may sound totally mental, but it woked like a bomb :-)
However, I have to confess, that at about the 5km mark, I was starting to think that I was seriously insane to be doing this and was really wondering if I could finish it. However, as I had a plan to get to the end, I just kept plodding on.
There was one drawback on the course though and that was running past a solid waste treatment plant (I can't remember at what point in the course it was, probably about the 3 or 4km mark I'd say). Eeeewwwww, the smell was disgusting, but on the plus side, it did motivate me to keep on running, maybe even a little faster LOL
Getting back to CPUT campus was great, because I knew that at that point I had about 2.5km more to go. All the way along, I was on track for my 1h20. In the beginning I was reaching most of the km markers BEFORE the time I needed to be there for my time, and that was great because it gave me more leeway when walking, I could relax and recover a bit more. In the last 3km's though, I was reaching the km mark exactly when I needed to so I had to make sure that I didn't walk for more than 2mins and I had to walk pretty fast when I did walk. It was back in the campus that Trevor, my hubby (who was doing marshelling inside the campus) got these shots of me running.
Thats me in the navy blue, light blue cap and black compression socks
At this point I was still on track for my 1h20, although I was VERY tired, so needed to work hard to keep it up. I was REALLY happy to see the finish line in sight and eventually finished in 1h19m which made me very happy. Having my two sil's there shouting for me at the finish was awesome too :-) All finishers of the 10km race got a medal and a pair of socks which was great.
I was a VERY tired, but VERY happy runner at the end. The race in my opinion was very successful and it seems that ProSano and Telkom Athletics Club make an awesome team. A lot of work goes into hosting a race like this and if I remember correctly there were about 120 or so helpers on the day to make sure that everything went smoothly and it did. Well done ProSano and Telkom Athletics Club, really a job well done!!!!
Oh and well done to me too hehehehe
I'm very happ
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