Milkwood Half with Hammy cramps

So, yesterday I ran the Milkwood half marathon plus a bit extra, as my Polar GPS watch suggested it was 21.47km in total, effectively making it the longest distance I've ever run in one session in almost 40 years. My time 2 hours, 15 minutes & 51 seconds. My running mate Colin, AKA The Flash, finished 5 minutes ahead of me.

At these organised road races everybody is split into categories by age. There are usually prizes for the top 3 per category. Until I turn 40 I'm in the Senior category (age 20 to 39) at road races, from the 19th May I move up to the Masters category, in other words the Old Toppies. I'll be racing the grandpa's! This upsets me immensely, I don't want to be old, even less so be one of the youngest in the old-age category and still get beaten by the geriatrics with 100 years of running experience!

We made the long journey out there in my stoopid little Atos, fortunately we had the good sense to start early (I was up at 4am on a Sunday morning, cursing myself at the time), we got there an hour early at 5.30am which was a good move because we managed to park quite close to the finish. Despite it still being dark and drizzling at the time we we were amped for the race, last big training before Two Oceans next Saturday.

It was another fantastic race in another of the Cape's stunning scenic locations along the Southern Peninsula between Kommetjie and Scarborough, starting and ending at the Soetwater resort in the middle. The run itself did feel longer than it was because despite the beautiful scenery it was the same all the way, particularly the stretch between Kommetjie and Scarborough, one loooong road with mountain on one side, sea on the other and a whole lot of road full of runners in front, so it did get a bit dull at times. I did though have my music again which was great for the most part, except the cable for the headphones became annoying, they kept getting caught up under my armpit and contributed to the bad chafe I get under the arms. I eventually took them off and did the last few kilometers with only the beat of my feet pounding the road as music, which was also nice at the time.

Talking of chafe, the usual terror-chafe I get on my upper thighs just under the groin was non existent, thanks to a pair of sports technical underwear I bought on Saturday. These things were fantastic, they're comfortable and kept me dry and totally friction free. How I didn't know of these things before is just bizarre, although I should know that the cotton jocks I was wearing before would cause chafe, as cotton does! So that's one more chafe conquered, like plasters on the titties, another bit of vital running apparel. Now I just need to figure out a cure for the horrible under arm chafe, which has the double whammy of burning a second time after I shower and spray deodorant on having forgotten the chafe.That shit really burns like fire!

The interesting thing about this race is we didn't get medals at the end, instead we got saplings of
indigenous trees, I think it's Wild Olive. I was a bit annoyed at this at first because I like the medals, I'm quite proud of my steadily growing collection in my bar at home. But the idea has "grown" on me, yesterday I planted my baby tree and I look forward to nurturing it as it grows up. My medal tree!

So the race was going well, I was pushing at a comfortable pace averaging around 6 minutes a kilometer, I hit the 10km mark at 59 minutes and carried on like that, until just before 15km my right hamstring said howzit and cramped up suddenly like never before. It was like a shooting pain down my leg. I had to stop and stretch and rub but then carried on. It was quite painful for a while but I ran through it, though my pace was down considerably, the last 6km was uncomfortable so I lost a fair bit of time.

Despite the cramp and headphone hassles I still pulled off a personal best for a 21km, beating my previous time by only a minute, it's still an improvement. It was actually more than aminute because the race was longer than 21.1km by 370m.

I'm expecting Two Oceans to be a similar time. It's unlikely I'll finish much quicker than that because of all the people, I'll be one of 16,000 runners doing that one which is a hell of a lot of people on the road to navigate through, there are always rows of idiots moving slowly that the rest of us have to run around, at the big races they're like waves rolling along the road. Except these waves you can'r ride, though I'd like to run over them sometimes!

Colin my running buddy generally always finishes ahead of me, usually the 10km he comes in around 5 minutes before me, so had it not been for my cramp this time we'd probably have finished around the same time yesterday. At Two Oceans I'm seeded in group C, he's back in D starting 10 minutes after me, he reckons he'll catch me by halfway, I reckon I'll be waiting for him at the finish line. Hahaha.

On another note, this story of Facebook being blocked at work is really annoying. There's photo's on there from yesterday's event that I need to now email to myself from my phone to access on my PC to upload to this blog. On the plus side, I'll take out my frustration by writing to my blog more often, as is happening!

Happy Monday y'all, have an awesome week!