Done!

Well, I did it. For this March/April break I set myself two goals:

1. I would run the Longtom Half-Marathon in 1 hour 50 minutes.

2. Seven days after the Longtom Half-Marathon, I would run the Two Oceans Half-Marathon. My cumulative time would be less than 4 hours.

Bear in mind that, when making these goals for myself, I had only run one half-marathon in my life, and I hadn't even run the whole thing! (last year I finished Longtom in 2 hours 17 minutes) So I considered them to be pretty substantial, yet reasonable, goals.

Well, let me give you the results of my races:

1. Longtom: exactly one week ago, I ran with about 55 of my fellow PCVs (see picture above.....yes, Tom aka Hot Dog Man ran in a diaper and bonnet). I finished in 1 hour 50 minutes 41 seconds....achieving my goal-time!

2. Two Oceans: this morning at 6am the race began in the beautiful city of Cape Town. I ran along with ELEVEN THOUSAND people running the half-marathon....it's an amazing sight to see that many people running at once. (there were also eight thousand ultra-marathon runners who ran the 56 km Two Oceans Ultra Marathon today). I arrived at the start line this morning still a bit sore from Longtom last weekend, but I had set myself this goal and I intended to achieve it. I finished the race today in just under 1 hour 55 minutes. So, that puts my cumulative time for the two races at 3 hours 45 minutes, well under my goal-time!

So I've achieved what I wanted to (in terms of running, at least) this holiday. I'm happy that I was able to do Longtom to benefit the KLM Foundation (see below for more info about KLM). And I'm just as happy that I was able to travel across the country to run the World's Most Beautiful Race. So far, it's been a helluva vacation! (more on that next time)