This weekend I joined the rest of Joburg and went to watch Kings of Leon at Soccer City. Needless to say I decided not to run a race on Sunday morning, but rather to stay in bed and enjoy a lazy day of no exercise. So when I heard about the Hunters Half Marathon on Saturday in Pretoria, I figured it would be the perfect chance to make up my mileage with a long run that I otherwise would have missed this week. My running partner and her brother got on board with the idea and so we all set our alarms for 4 am, grabbed the GPS and made our way to Pretoria in the early hours of Saturday morning. As we set off in the dark, there were a few moans and groans about getting up so early and driving so far just to run! But as we got closer and the sky got lighter we all woke up a bit and got excited to start the race, which promised to be a fast and easy course. It looked a bit like rain but thankfully the weather held out and we didn't have to worry about that. Just as well, because there were enough other problems during the race to get our blood boiling! The start was very congested and it took a long while before we were able to start running comfortably. This is an issue in many races though, so while it was annoying, that's not quite what made us so upset. The first 7km of the race went by without any hassles, but as the runners reached what should have been the 8km mark, we started noticing that there was a mistake and the marker told us that we had already run 10km. From that point on, right to the very end of the course, each marker was 2km out. It became the topic of conversation among the runners for the duration of the race and every one seemed pretty upset. Well, I spent the first 5km after the mistake being highly pissed off that I had gotten up at 4am just to run 19km! But then as I got more and more tired as the race continued, I started feeling quite relieved that it would be 2km short! So for the next 5km I felt great! I was tired and I would only have to run another 1km! Of course by the time the last marker - the 20km marker - appeared, my Garmin told me I had run 18km, but I didn't care anymore. I just wanted to blitz through that last km and go home. However, as I continued to run and as my watch counted down the meters towards 19km, I came to a shocking realisation that 19km in fact would not be the end of this race! I couldn't see the end and the runners up ahead didn't seem to be turning off to any finish line just yet. So I kept running....and running and running! In the end, after I had mentally prepared myself for a short race, we ran almost 3km between the false 20km mark and the finish. By the time I finally entered the sports grounds, I was so irritated that I didn't even care that I had done a good time! At least I had a Garmin watch! I felt even more sorry for those runners who had no idea of what was going on, just a thought that things were seriously wrong! Passing the fake 20km mark, many runners were shocked at their time and were excited and convinced that they would run a miraculous PB, only to be severely disappointed when they were still on their feet 2km later and the PB slowly became a distant memory! Now that's enough to upset any runner!
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