So I've been in South Africa for a little over three months, and I've been running quite a bit. Studying abroad has provided a nice combination of ideal weather and NO track season, which have allowed me to finally get some good mileage in and hopefully rise above the limbo and funk of overtraining and injury-plaguedness that I've been dragging like an anchor in races since sophomore year sometime.
We're joined in PE by Savo Heleta, a Bosnian-born alum of my school and my school's CC team (he just published a damn good book about the Bosnian war, so pick up a copy). He's kept me abreast on the local running scene and last week he told me about a half marathon that was slated for today (Saturday, 17 May) and would start at a rugby stadium about a mile from our flats. Perfect, I thought, for testing the waters and seeing what kind of shape I'm in.
So today rolls around, and Savo and his housemate picks up me and two of my roomates (who run recreationally and wanted to give it a try) in front of our place at 6:30 AM to go to the stadium. Problem is, as we roll up to the stadium, it appears deserted and quite void of anything that looks like the starting and finishing points of a large-scale road race. Oh no, the guard tells us, they moved the location, and no, he doesn't know where. Yes, he was told, but sorry, he forgot.
Savo wheels out of the stadium grounds amidst a flurry of Bosnian profanities, setting out to comb the beachfront in search of a large crowd of runners, or anything that resembles a race site, for that matter. We drive around Summerstrand and campus and Humewood for half an hour, right up until the race is supposed to start, but we have no luck. So he drops us back off.
My two roomates go back to bed. I, on the other hand, am dressed and have been training (not to mention that I stayed back from a weekend trip for this), so I decided to create my own 13-mile adventure.
Here's where the fun starts:
7:06 AM - the race was slated to start 6 minutes ago. I'm standing on the beach walkway across the street from our flats, donning my running shorts, my (new) neon Asics DS-racers, and a singlet with a big obnoxious SA flag pattern that I found at a specialty running store in Cape Town. I set my watch and take off at about 6-minute pace, feeling good but looking ridiculous.
18 minutes later, I'm about three miles in. I've just come up to the road tht turns into the NMMU campus, and I'm greeted by the sight of a few race officials in red, as well as a sign that says "1 mile" (they marked miles as well as kilometers).
"Did the race just go by here?" I ask.
"Yes, they started a little bit ago."
"And they went that way?" I point straight, in the direction I had been going.
"That's last place, right there."
Screw the 13-mile tempo run, I think. I want to run this derned race already.
So I take off down this two-lane road that winds, flatly, through the bushvelt and around the cape, parallel to the ocean. I'm keeping up the same pace, I think, though I start passing people, a few at a time, and can't help but surge a little each time I do. Pretty soon I'm blazing through hordes of people as the road winds around the campus, past the track stadium, and we hit the 3, 4 and 5 mile marks. Eventually we start getting passed in the other direction by some sleek-looking African runners in Mr. Price jerseys, all the while trying to drink water from these obscure little blue plastic sealed bags that they hand out. My first two tries ended when the bags slip out of my hand like a wet fish, and the third almost ended tragically when I tried to tear the bag open with my teeth and gagged on the plastic bits that came off, to say nothing of the unnaturally pressurized stream of water with which I was trying to hydrate.
Eventually, those in the lead pack started to notice me, it seemed - either because I was absolutely flying past people on our side of the road, or because I was wearing a ridiculously loud assortment of colors between my jersey and my shoes. Either way, I got some glances and nods.
To the halfway point - I wheel around the cones and continue my passing ways, and I'm starting to hear things like "holy crap, that guy just passed us" and "geebus, he's moving," and I'm tempted to yell "yeah, well I started in last place, you dopes!" but I'm reminded that 1) I look ridiculous, though this helps them remember me, I guess, and 2) I've run two miles further than everyone else in the race thus far and could therefore implode at any moment. I decide to play conservative in case I bonk and they all pass me later.
So I'm booking it down the road, through the bushvelt, in the other direction, and staring quite directly into the sun. I'm trying to imagine how my face looked to everyone going the other direction. Probably similar to the time I attempted to watch the movie Phonebooth only to discover that Jared Leto is, rather than an actor, a blowup doll filled entirely with raw sewage, which was particularly disappointing for the actor who played Prefontaine, though it would explain why THAT movie sucked as well.
But I digress. I pass the 16k mark, after we've turned left and don't need to look straight into the sun. I continue to pass people - in fact, I believe I wasn't passed by anyone the entire way. But then again, I started in last. The runners were getting harder to pass now. The women were looking more and more elite. The men were looking more and more African-born.
At the 20k mark, I started what I thought was the final kick, because I had done the math in my head, and I was pretty sure we only had about 1k to go. Then again, I was in no state to do math, a practice at which I'm bad to begin with (though I was conscionable enough to know this), so I started to worry, because I was going at a pace that was entirely unsustainable for any more than 1k. If we had more than 1k to go, I would have to be peeled off the pavement.
Just when I started to get worried, though, I saw a lightpost ad with Barack Obama's face that said "Go Further." Irony not lost, I laughed a little, which helped. I also tried to come up with some clever joke or self-imposed wisdom, but I'd been running at well under 6-minute pace for some time and was more inclined to formulate a way to breath out of new places, like my ears.
I managed to pass two more guys in the final 1k, where they had the finish chute roped up with flags like a high school cross-country meet. I was gaining on what turned out to be the lead woman, but my legs started to buckle and I had scary visions of the gatorade commercial where the Aussie Ironman competitor does the no-legs dance. I didn't slow down in particular, but I knew that I was spent and I didn't bother doing the lean at the finish line or any of that melodramatic hoopla.
I looked at the official time, which was 1:33. That sounds a bit slow, but I started to consider the other factors - I had run 15 miles, not 13.1, in that time. I was also probably not going as fast as I could have had my warmup not consisted of a tempo run that transitioned immediately (that's important) into the race. I also started 6 minutes late.
So I started to do some math - First, I split the difference on the 6-minute tardiness, assuming that they probably started the race a couple minutes late. So we're at 1:30. Take away two miles at 6-minute pace, which is that pace I started at, and we're at 1:18. Then, if I'm not tired when I start on miles 3-15, I can probably take off a couple more minutes.
Not too bad, I'm thinking, considering I started this fall off a string of injuries so debilatating to my training that I struggled through September to break 31 minutes in the 8k. The course was flatter than a Nebraska-shaped pancake, but I'm happy with it nonetheless.
Meanwhile, it didn't take the finish line folks long to figure out that I wasn't wearing a race number. I was alerted to this fact by an approaching (large) Afrikaner race official, and though I was inclined to say "Screw you, I had to run two extra miles for this crap, and I'm not going to pay for 13 if I have to run 15, because that's like trying to make me pay for a purse when I want to buy a suitcase, but it doesn't really matter becuse I'm trying to steal this suitcase, you silly Afrikaner," or maybe "you look ridiculous because you're wearing neon yellow," I just made up some story about how we went to the stadium thinking it was there and therefore were late, but don't worry, we paid, or actually my friend did, and he's behind me, and he has our stuff because the race started when he was still paying and I abandoned him to go race. I guess it was half-true. And I felt guilty about this because I help organize a race in the states and am well aware that dodging an entry fee is ultra-taboo. But it was their own damn fault, not telling us when they switched the starting point. I'll mail the PE athletic club the R40 entry fee if demand is strong enough.
I went searching for some water. They had a water stand with paper cups. Perfect!
The cups are filled with Coke.
I miss America.
I started to walk home, slowly. With about two miles to go, I picked up into a jog, but had to stop a few times. I made it though. 17 miles, some blood stains in my shoes, and a finisher's medal with a moustachioed likeness of the runner after whom the race is named. Plus I got some compliments from people I'd passed who were still running and recognized (shockingly) the obnoxious jersey, even though I was holding it in my hand at this point.
Not a bad morning...
Had to share.