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Monday, April 26, 2010

Choices Were Made

Having to work on Freedom Day meant that my choice for sport for the long weekend was going to be limited to the events on Saturday. Being into multi sport meant that I could make my choice first thing on Saturday morning between the George Marathons, and the off road events at Chandelier in Oudtshoorn. Before the sun rose on Saturday morning I made up my mind to do the 21 km trail run in the Chandeleir Game Reserve. I needed however to juggle some logistics in order to get my better half Dael out of bed and to the start of the mountain bike at Chandelier as well as pick up one of the guys who works for me and get him to the start of the Outeniqua half marathon in George.



Chandeleir is a great place for a trail run and mountain bike event and the harsh rocky Karoo terrain seemed a bit tamer in the early morning coolness that greeted us. The run started at a relatively tame pace and there was a group of 5 of us that headed up the first climb together. Trail runner supreme Cas Van Aaarden then had enough of the small talk and headed of into the distance and stayed there. Tatum Prins and I chatted a bit longer until the hill took its toll even on her endless babble of words. The route comprised of technical jeep track that just prevented you from looking up at the scenery run finished just before the heat of the day kicked in I came in in 5th place in a time of 1hr42 with the winners in on 1hr25 so all in all a good day in the Karoo.



The real story for me of the weekend unravelled itself when we got back to Wilderness and the finish of the Marathon and Half Marathon to pick up Slegazi and Besch from the Crags. These two had put in really great performances with Slegazi coming off a knee injury and running a 1hr30 half marathon and Besch coming 7th in the Marathon with a time of 2hr 47.That is all great but consider this: Besch left home at 2:ooam to hitch a lift to the start in George a distance of 140km. He only got a lift at 5:oo am. got to the start with 15 minutes to spare.What did he have for breakfast he shrugged his shoulders when I asked this question. Slegazi got a lift with me at 5:30am but also ran on an empty stomach (I gave him a bar and a Gu to run with).

The picture below is outside the Wimpy in Sedgefield where we stopped and bought the guys a Burger,chips and Coke ( The Cokes at the finish were R8-00 and to expensive for the guys!!!)


Aren't we spoiled for choice????

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