An unexpected scouting trip including Southern Cross Drive!!

I'm currently sitting at a restaurant in Simon's Town waiting for my meeting to start at 11am. I can see the marina in the foreground, fluttering flags and mast sticking up in the breeze. The naval harbour is behind that and in the background is False Bay, a really pretty sight and there is a cool sea breeze blowing in. What a hard life. It's great to come here everytime.

So I came down to Cape Town, kindof expecting not to have any of my own time, so I didn't plan anything for last night. I also didn't expect to have my own transport, but my boss had a friend come fetch him from the hotel, so i had the use of the hire car.

I caught up with my uncle and cousins at my cousins place in Houtbay, but not before I drove up Southern Cross Drive!!! I know there are already reviews of the 2 Oceans half marathon route, but this is mine, read it, don't read it :P. I've driven all the parts of the route, even cycled most parts, except Southern Cross Drive, but I've never looked at it with running in mind. Truth be told until a few years ago i would have laughed if you said I'd be running this half marathon...any half marathon!

So here goes, Southern Cross Drive seems not to be TOO bad, it is about 3km long and it starts off pretty slowly, flattens out a few times and then comes to a crecendo in the last kilometer as it approaches Rhodes drive. So that was the first part of my scouting trip.

I then went for a fantastic braai and catchup session with my uncle Philip's family (I quite a few uncle's two of who'm I think are reading this). Always a hoot, but thats not really part of this discussion. After a pretty hairy drive down the mountain back onto houtbay's main road, I headed back onto Rhodes drive considering the route as I went.

After Southern Cross drive there is a pleasant little down hill and then a few ups and downs before the climb to the Kirstenbosch topgate, which could be rather tiring, especially as I think it's about 15km into the run! Once you are there it seems that the rest of the way in is pretty much easy going, or serious downhill, it must be a good 4 or 5 km to the turn onto the M3, where there is a little uphill and then mostly flat all the way to UCT.

So is the route tough? I think so. Is the route gonna be fun? Absolutely! Most of it is through forrested parts of Cape Town, so I think it's gonna be great! Pretty tough, but great. Now back to that training!!

57 days

Last nights Lantern Race was quite fun. With a bit of thunder keeping you awake and some lightening intermittently illuminating the path. It had been threatening to rain and a light drizzle started about half way through which was also very nice. What I didn't like was the the 5km and 10km runners and walkers started together, and there were A LOT of us! So the first 2/3km were choas, with it being impossible to get any rythm.

But as far as the running goes it was alright, I was feeling pretty tired, and maybe I'm doing too much, afterall I did 13km on Saturday, hills on Monday and now a 10km yesterday. I think it calls for less work till next week Monday.

Good news is my heart rate monitor is working happily again, so I have some more data, and it still is of the "more normal" variety. I'm very interested to hear what the cardiologist has to say tomorrow!! Some of it is attached below.
I had a thought about it last night, and that is if it behaves itself like it has been then I can try i different mode of pacing myself. At the moment I just pick a running time and a recovery time, but as you can see if you expand the graph there I have a definite recovery, so if I set myself some heartrate limits I can run until my heartrate exceeds some limit and then walk till it drops below another one. This will mean that when I'm feeling good I can run for longer without worrying about puching too hard.