Morning briefing
Sunday morning, 3:45 am, the alarm clock went off.
That’s what runners do… 😉
Some 150 – 200 runners followed the invitation of Durbanville Atlantic Club for a beautiful run, preparing for Two Oceans and Comrades.
The route included the two major hills of Two Oceans and another hill. We started in Hout Bay, went over Constantia Nek, through Constantia, over Ou Kaapse Weg to Nordhoek and back via Chapmans Peak drive to Hout Bay.
Our route, thanks to Andrew for the map!
The start was funny: Robin, the organizer, said “the slow runners should start now” – and everybody left… Luckily Andrew, Sean and a few other runners were not following the crowd. So we waited a few minutes to give them a head start.
On top of Ou Kaapse Weg
Off we went and I had a great conversation with Sean, our AAC club captain. We ran through the pitch black Hout Bay at 5:30 am and after 4 km the first water station was waiting for us. There we also met a first large group of runners and overtook them.
Funny how things go… Sean and I were driving each other up Constantia Nek at a pretty decent pace. Later we both said, that we thought the other one was chasing us up there 😉
It was a wonderful run in perfect running conditions (cloudy, maybe 20°C) and extremely well organized.
Big THANK YOU to Durbanville Athletic for having water, coke, sweets, banana bread (I love it, especially on the run), chips, bananas every 3 or so km. We stopped at every water station and had a little chat.
Sean and I on Chapman’s Peak Drive, almost at the finish
After 4h 00min we arrived back at the start, after 40 km. That was a great training run. But it felt like we could make it a complete marathon 😉
Since both Sean and I had to wait for our beloved wives at the finish to pick us up, we had some time left. Why not use it for something meaningful. Like running.
So we added a little loop of about 2.7 km and ended it with a nice run across Hout Bay beach, finishing a training marathon.
To be precise: an Ultra Marathon with 42.7 km in 4h 19 min.
We covered an elevation of 1060 m. You can have a look at this elevation chart (which is in MILES and FT!). Thanks to Andrew for the data!
Elevation chart (in miles and ft !) – the first hill: Constantia Nek, third hill: Chapman’s Peak belong to the Two Oceans route
After the race I checked our running data and we stopped in total for 18 min and 54 seconds. Which means in the end: We ran our Ultra, including 3 nice hills, in almost exactly 4 hours.
Perfect water station with a “water cup holder”
Now it was time for breakfast. I met Andrew and we went to have breakfast with our wifes.
| Distance | 42.7 km / 26.5 mi |
| Time | 4 h 19 min (incl. 19 min breaks) |
| Monthly distance (March) | 60.8 km / 37.8 mi |
| Annual distance | 676.3 km / 420.2 mi |
