Heard of this race in 2008 from Tony Green while doing my first Marathon in Delmas, eish took a long time to get there....
I convinced Liz that this was a good, booked a guest house and we decided to visits friends in Orkney afterwards..
We set off on Friday , found our Guest house and decided to do our pre Comrades snacky meal in the garden. Off to collect our numbers and Margit hijacked Liz while I waited in the queue. Got our numbers, set off to find a Woolies.. got a great selection of snacks and headed back to the our GH.
Had a beer at the pool, snacks in the Garden and early to bed. Three rooms were taken by Marathoners.. A lot of activity at 4 am and off to the start, parked under a tree. Saw Roto interviewing a few Legends, Julian "1001" Karp, The Running Mann, The Running/Walking Keith etc.
It was so awesome to be in the second row of athletes, Liz was in front of me.. I secretly knew that I needed a perfect event to qualify but also still know its only January. I went through my first park run in 34:30 and begun to feel like it was my day, Julian had warned me about the climb into Odendaalrus , slow poison which I thought carried on till the 42km mark. Flat is hard and you work all the way. This is the flattest marathon I have ever done, it just seemed like there was no respite.
I think my "fame" has preceded me in some quarters as Maggs who was the 5hr bus driver greeted me by name, also promising not to block my path ... subsequently I realised she was the 11:30 Comrades bus driver who I had a few interactions with.. This was a small well run bus... Run with Maggs
Small municipalities rally battle with Sewers etc, so we had a few sections where pace increased in spurts, we passed the legendary Louis Massyns house which was special..
Using my usual equal effort, I just kept going, my AHR was pretty much 138 the whole way, from memory I am normally in the low 150's on a marathon so I guess either I am a bit fitter or just unfit... I really enjoyed doing this marathon, not often I can do a 42 with hardly any pressure, I had hoped for a 4:58 but by halfway on my watch it was on 2:28 and the actual halfway by road markings was 2:31 ish so I knew qualifying was out so I decided to just enjoy the day out.
I cannot say it was very scenic route but it was really enjoyable to spend so much time in the countryside, mostly on a lonely path with hardly anyone around. I really prefer these out of town races, all the 47th Mielie races had a total of about 1000, 298 official finishers in the marathon, also helped Liz get a podium for fist 60 up lady...
After the prize giving we went back to our GH where we showered and headed to Orkney to see Eve and her Niece Eurika. We were treated like royalty and managed to restore all the weight we had "lost" , what an awesome recovery and catch up...
Roto did his usual race review and I have included the link here.
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