The Carnival City Curse

On the 17 October 2010 I set out to Carnival City Casino to run what I thought was going to be an easy and enjoyable race.  A few weeks before, I had broken the 2hour barrier for a half marathon for the first time on a fairly difficult course.  When I heard about the fast and flat race at Carnival City, I was eager to see what I time I could do there.  Unfortunately, my running man and I had a particularly bad start to the morning (lets face it, waking up at 4:30am on a Sunday morning to drive to Brakpan, never qualifies as a good morning, but this one was worse than usual).  For starters, we woke up late and it was proving to be quite a struggle to get above mentioned man up! Being grumpy and tired we had a silent argument for the duration of the drive there.  I was angry and upset and to make things worse, we were late! I had to sprint through the casino (where there was a surprising number of people playing Roulette at that time of the morning!) to get an entry, rush for a bathroom break and I only reached the start just as the gun went off.  By this stage I was so anxious and yes, typically emotional, that I couldn't even think about the mammoth task ahead of me (because a year ago a 21.1km was still a pretty mammoth task!).  The race went by with many tears and sighs along the way.  To add to my drama there were unnaturally strong winds blowing the whole morning, making my journey that much more unpleasant.  Despite everything, I finished the race in under 2hours.  As I crossed the finish line, I sobbed into my running mans chest - which of course he couldn't understand as the earlier argument was already a distant memory in his mind.  In the year that followed I always looked back on that day as one of the worst races I've ever done.

This year, I was determined to make a better day of the dreaded Carnival City race.  Unfortunately, the morning didn't start out too well again! First, my running man couldn't find his race kit and by the time he decided to wear something else, it seemed as though we would be late for the second year in a row.  Next, the GPS was being more of a hindrance than a help and we got slightly lost.  With about 25minutes to the start and no sight of Carnival City, I decided that this race was just never going to be a good one for me.  But somehow, in those last few minutes, we managed to find the Casino, get entries, make a bathroom  stop and push our way to the front of the field...with time to spare!  The only other thing that could ruin this race for me now was the weather.  No wind at all, but at 7am when the gun went off, it was already extremely hot! All runners had to be careful to stay hydrated and preserve energy as the temperature climbed to 30 degrees.  As the race went on, I started to enjoy the morning and despite the heat, I finished in a PB of 1:44! I will no longer pull my face when someone mentions Carnival City, I have a new, better memory of it now and the curse is officially broken!