Vibram FiveFingers

Okay, so this morning I took another little test run in my FiveFingers. 5km, my base training route from work.


Surprisingly my shins didn't hurt at all like last time. I guess wearing them around the house so much helped more than I expected. The only 'issue' was a hot spot under my left big toe. But taping it for a couple of runs should sort that out.


So I think I'm ready to try a 6-7 km run in my FiveFingers. See how that goes...

Counting down to Christmas

Okay, so it's been a while since my last post, so I think it's time for an update.


What have I been up to lately? That's easy - running, working, running, working, running, ...
Well, you get the picture.
And I am more than ready for a holiday round about now.

But, sadly, I'm not taking any real leave this year. I've got the week off between Christmas and New Years, next week in other words, but that's it. I'll take a proper holiday maybe March or July next year - turn either Cango Marathon or Knysna Half/Marathon into a holiday getaway.


In the meantime, I've organised a mini post-Christmas getaway for next weekend. Andrew and I will be making our way to Hermanus for a weekend away. I'll be running the Betty's Bay Half Marathon, and afterwards take in the sights of the Overberg. Just getting out of town is a break.


On the home front, I'm still going for my morning runs. Sometimes solo, sometimes with my training partners.
This morning was a made-for-running morning!!! A little nippy to start with, but we quickly warmed up without the need for our Second Skins. It was quite pleasant by the time we reached out water point - a little cool, but just enough so to keep you comfortable while running. The views were amazing (missed the sunrise, it's a little early for us right now!), the air crisp, clean and clear, with just a hint of cloud over Table Mountain. Can a day start out any better than that???


And tomorrow we're watching the cricket! A good excuse to escape from work a little earlier than usual, and we'll have the best parking in the house :) I haven't been to see a cricket match live for a couple of years (a shame, I know, and completely inexcusable considering close it all is!) I'm really looking forward, just hope the weather plays along. I think I heard something on the weather report yesterday afternoon about a chance for light rain tomorrow?? Will have to check the latest on WeatherSA this afternoon or tomorrow.

Hills, Hills, and More Hills!!!

Wow, talk about hills!!! They should seriously consider renaming Bishops Court to 'Bishops Hills'!!!!

Take a look at our route profile from this morning:

Yeah, it was every bit as hilly as it looks!! But that doesn't mean it wasn't fun at the same time!! :-)

We ran a surprisingly good pace for this kind of profile, and it was definitely a very scenic route (except for km's 1-4 along the M3 next to morning peak traffic).
Thursday will be an easy one though, to taper for this weekend's Landmarks Half (and good ol' Rhodes Mem hill!)

Training for Landmarks Half Marathon

So the Landmarks Half is coming up next weekend (15th November, next Saturday), and it contains one lovely 'little hill' - Rhodes Memorial!! Having never done the Landmarks before, but hearing much about that 'little hill', our morning running group decided to do some hill training in preparation.


So yesterday 3 of us set out on our first Rhodes Memorial training run. Eina ouch, man was that a monster hill!!! But once you get to the top, there is no describing the feeling of having conquered that mountain! And as they saying goes: "what goes up, must come down". So down we went, and down, down, down!!


All that downhill left me with a very tender right shin (mild case of shin splints probably), so today I'm resting! Took some arnica last night and again this morning. Still feels a little bruised, but already much better. I should be able to tackle that same route again tomorrow.


Here is the route profile from yesterday's training run, just to give you an idea of what that 'little hill' is like:

Grape Run

Yesterday was the Constantia Valley Grape Run, one of my favourite races on the year's calendar. It's 21km through the Constantia Valley wine farms and Tokai Forest. Even though it's not officially summer yet, this race always seems to have fair weather. I actually ended up with a mild sunburn after yesterday's event!


The route is very scenic (i.e. hilly), but always fun. The atmosphere is festive, the views are stunning, and there are some great lucky-draw prizes up for grabs after the race. Always a popular event, I make a point of running this one every year. This year we ran right through a small troop of baboons who had congregated on either side of the road in the middle of Tokai Forest. They looked a little confused at seeing 2000 runners making their way through the forest, must've been wondering what on earth we were up to!!


This race is a must for next year!! By today the sunburn is nearly gone, and the legs are still just a little stiff, but I'm feeling surprisingly good!!!


For results and photos from past events (this year's official photo's should be up soon) have a look at the race's official home page:
http://www.vob.co.za/_race_graperun.asp

Workaholic...?

Wow, these last 2 weeks have been pretty hectic. My average day has been 7am-7pm. Sometimes including a lunch break of anything between 5 and 45 minutes... I think I may need a holiday. When's the next public holiday again...???


At least it's been productive work - I've managed to get a lot done and finish off the project work I've been busy with. Just got out of a meeting in which a few more requirements were identified, but thankfully most of them are non-critical and don't have to be done before I go home today. Which means I may actually get home before dark for the first time in 2 weeks!! Yipee!!!!! I wonder what I'm gonna do with all that 'extra' time on my hands?? I know - sleep!!!!


Tomorrow morning is going to be another early morning. I've been organising a running group in the mornings, twice a week, starting from work and just generally sightseeing Newlands and Bishops Court areas. Mostly the 'members' are some runner-colleagues of mine, but I've convinced a few friends to join in as well. The more the merrier - if you live/work in/around Newlands and are an avid runner (i.e. not afraid of pitching up at 06:00 am to start a run!), maybe you want to join our little running group? As the group grows, it's actually nicer, 'cause we can now split into smaller groups for faster and slower runners (I fall under the 'slower' category, although I do manage to keep the 'faster' guys in my sights if I go for a flat-out sprint. But that does kind of tire me out just a little... ;P
On the bright side, I'm getting in plenty of speed work!!!! Oh, and hills. If you're afraid of hills then rather stick to your current training schedule - Newlands and Bishops Court is extremely scenic (read: hilly)!!! When I started out a few years ago, I hated hill work. It would leave me out of breath, jelly-legged and questioning my sanity. But a couple of weeks of trying desperately to keep up with the stronger hill-runners who I happen to work with, and I suddenly realised that the hills were becoming ever so slightly easier. Eventually I started agreeing with my one friend's favourite mantra: "The hills are your friends!". I now actually enjoy running hilly races and training runs. They really are much more scenic. And the effort of slogging up the hills makes you feel so much better when you reach the top. Oh, and don't forget the inevitable downhill cruise that follows every climb!!! "What goes up must come down" after all. Eventually....!

Oh what a beautiful morning...!

Wow, what an amazing day!!! I went out for a 10km run this morning with 2 friends - starting at 6:15 from work, we ran for around 1h10. The weather was perfect - warm but not hot. The skies were blue and clear. Fresh air, birds signing in the trees. Just perfect for a run!!!


We started out on the usual hill, taking it slow and enjoying the clean fresh air. We picked up the pace pretty quickly and soon we were flying along!! The guys were having 'easy' runs, I was having a bit more of a 'tempo' workout, but I felt great and still managed to keep up the conversation, so it wasn't too fast. We meandered along our usual route through Newlands and up to Stone Church for water, then decided to be brave and face 'the hill' that is Glastonbury Road, Bishops Court. We made it to the top completely spent but feeling fantastic!!! Then came the downhill cruise all the way back.


A quick shower and steaming mug of coffee later, and I'm feeling absolutely amazing!!


It's a little hard to sit still concentrate on work now, with all those endorphins still flowing through my veins!!!


Here's hoping that the weather will play along on Thursday for another run!!!

Allergies...?

Well, this has been an 'interesting' week indeed. And it's only half-way through.
The weekend was spent outdoors, enjoying the fresh air and beautiful spring weather. Sunday we went hiking up to the blockhouse above Rhodes Memorial and had a ball. But then things started falling apart...


Now this hasn't been the first time I've been up to the Blockhouse, but the first time I've actually come off second best. Sunday afternoon I started itching - I thought it was just the bugs that had been biting me, and it wasn't too bad so I ignored it.


Monday, no better but no worse either, fine, get one with my day. 


Well, early hours of Tuesday morning arrive and I scratch myself awake. No amount of wriggling or scratching makes any difference, save for making things worse. So I take a drive to the pharmacy for some anti-histamines and lotion to stop the itching - they send me straight to hospital! But this time it's going on 1:00 a.m. on Tuesday morning, and I'm going out of my mind from the itching.


Okay, so I'm admitted to hospital, and get jabbed with needles left, right and centre. Well, maybe that's a bit of an exaggeration - it was only left and right... Once in each bum-cheek and once in my left arm. That was to put the medicine in. Then they drew blood from my right arm to run tests to try to determine what had caused the allergic reaction.


Thankfully the medication kicked in fairly quickly, and my skin stopped crawling. It also practically knocked me out, right there in the emergency ward!!!


I was discharged a little after 2:00 a.m. on Tuesday morning, with a doctor's note for work and a prescription for anti-histamines to take for the next few days. Needless to say I decided to take the doctor's advice and stay home that day (Tuesday) - it was nearly time to get up for work, and having had just about no sleep so far, I was completely and utterly exhausted! I set my alarm for a reasonable time to sms my boss to let him know that I would not be in that day, then off to dreamland at last...


Tuesday I spend pretty much most of the day sleeping off the medication, which still had me pretty drowsy. But by Tuesday night I was feeling pretty much myself again.


Today (Wednesday) I phoned the hospital to get the blood-test results, to find out what had caused such a severe allergic reaction. Strangely, everything came out 100% 'normal'! So that's one mystery still unsolved. I suspect it may be something to do with the spring-time fynbos out near Rhodes Mem - the last time I was in that area the fynbos had not started flowering yet, which is about the only 'unusual' thing I can figure that I've done since this weekend... I guess I'll just have to keep a close eye if I start itching again and try to figure out if any circumstances coincide with last weekend... Until them, I appear to be 100% cured!


But with tons of work to catch up on....

The Great Outdoors

Down here in Cape Town we have been blessed with a couple of lovely weekends - all in a row! Looks like winter is finally moving out and summer is on it's way in. Needless to say, I've been taking full advantage of the beautiful weather, spending time in the great outdoors. Hiking, running, even doing loads of washing!


First it was Newlands Forest up towards Skeleton Gorge:

Then we went up (and up and up and up and up...) to Elephant's Eye Cave out in Tokai:

Then it was back to Newlands for a nice relaxing stroll into Kirstenbosch and back:

And most recently up to King's Blockhouse above Rhodes Memorial:

I've loaded the full albums on Facebook.

Day off...

So yesterday's hike went very well. We had a bigger turnout than I expected (5 in all), and it was the perfect day weather-wise too!!

We started out about 45 minutes late, due to waiting for a couple of no-shows, who in typical Cape Town style had confirmed the day before then decided the morning-of not to pitch, but didn't bother phoning to let us know...

Anyway, we started of a little after 10:00 from Tokai Arboretum, and up we went. And up, and up, and up some more. I thought this would be a 'walk in the park'. Boy was I wrong. But it was fun nonetheless. Except for this one part where you literally have to scramble up a small incline, it was all walkable (there were even some of the hardier trail runners out and about, running where I was careful where I stepped at a walk in case I twist my ankle on the rocks!

But it was all in good fun. And the views from the top were absolutely breath-taking!!

It took us little over an hour and a half to get to the top. Including a refreshing stop to fill our water bottles from a mini-'waterfall' about 3/4 of the way up.

We had a small picnic brunch in the cave itself - and a well-deserved rest. Then it was back down again, to complete a thoroughly amazing morning!


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Today I've spent working. House work that is... I've taken the day off work, but that doesn't mean I've been doing nothing! I've doing about 3 loads of washing already, 2/3 of which is still drying on the line (and I'm keeping a close eye on the skies, just in case the rain decides to fall after all, but so far so good!) I've also been re-installing my work-computer, a task that I've been putting off for a while already...


And other general spring-cleaning activities...


Guess that means I should log off now and get back to work....!

Long weekend...

Yay, it's a loonnggg weekend coming up! Like roughly half of Cape Town, I've taken Friday off to take full advantage of the long weekend a.k.a. mini-holiday. Relax, destress, garden, spring clean my house - looks like it's going to be a busy weekend :-)

So what have you planned for the long weekend (for those who were lucky enough to be able to take Friday off??)

As for me, I'm going on a hike tomorrow morning with my wonderful man, Andrew, and some friends. Elephant's Eye. I haven't been there yet, but it looks be to quite a stunning hike. Here are some links that describe the area (Tokai Forest) and some popular routes:

• http://www.crag.org.za/routes.html#tokai
• http://www.crag.org.za/eye.html
• http://blog.sa-venues.com/provinces/western-cape/elephants-eye-cave/
• http://www.take-a-hike.co.za/Cape%20Town%20Corner/Article%2002f/Hikes%202006%2015/Hikes%202006%2015.htm
• http://hiking-guide.blogspot.com/2009/08/hiking-trail-tokai-arboretum.html

At least the weather looks like it will play along - cool and cloudy with no rain (at least that's how I interpret WeatherSA's prediction of "30% [chance for] 0mm [rain])...

Hike and a picnic brunch, what better way to spend the morning of a public holiday? And sleep it off later the afternoon :P

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Okay, so that takes care of Thursday, what am I doing for the rest of the 'weekend'?

Well, Friday I'm re-installing my work-laptop. It's long overdue, and I don't have the time to do it during my work hours, nor can I afford to give up my pc for a day+ so that the techies can do their thing. I mean, it's not exactly rocket science, installing a PC... Just a mission to reload all of your software and get your short-cuts just right.

Besides the computer, Friday will be put to good use doing some spring cleaning, more washing, hopefully some gardening, weather-permitting of course.

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Saturday and Sunday, those are for pure relaxation! Maybe go see a movie, do some more reading (I was lucky to get hold of the new Dan Brown book - 'The Lost Symbol' - the day it hit the shelves. I read his previous 4 books ('Angels and Demons', 'The Da Vinci Code', 'Digital Fortress' and 'Deception Point') and found each one absolutely brilliant! This new one is just as good! Nothing nicer than to curl up on the couch in the evenings with a good book.