Training Log Archive: Stijn

Recovery run. Right hip muscle feels a bit strained on the hills.

I had been looking forward to this race for a while and conditions were pretty perfect on the day. We got bussed out to a start point out West and as usual, I started far too fast on the initial gradual gradients approaching the first climb up the Magaliesberg Ridge.

I walk/ran the climb, just staying in contact with Nic all the way up. Opened up the taps on the first technical descent and managed to pass a few runners and get a gap. The run along the top was awesome, but my energy started fading on this section (about 90 mins in), so all the fake descents which eventually swung back for some more climbing were making life tough.

I probably pushed too hard on the way down to the Greek Church and hit the wall on the way up the gorge for the "bonus climb" (21km). I got Brianed for the first time as he came cruising past on the technical downhill. Managed to catch him again before we hit the water point at the Greek Church (3h) which surprised me as I thought he was gone..

3 cups of coke and a water top-up later, I was feeling pretty strong with 9km to go and put a pretty decent gap into Brian on the way down to the river. Despite topping up with some food on this stretch, my friend the wall said hi again with about 5km to go. I was walking flat stretches and even resorted to "borrowing" half a bottle of coke from a 20km runner :)

I got Brianed for the final time as he came cruising past with about 2km to go, motivating me to push for a sub-4 time. Managed to find some energy from somewhere and ran the whole last stretch to finish to sneak under 4h, about 1min behind Brian. Placed 18th out of 198. Lekker race but I need to pace myself better if I am to survive the Hobbit 100!

Mr Gardner - respect! Especially considering you haven't run further than 12km in months... Brad and I should form a support group ;)

Was craving some speed after all the mountain running.