Into the Ultras

Its already been a week since I ran my first Ultra Marathon.  Two Oceans 56km is going to be a tough one to beat in terms of great running memories! The start was cold but thankfully not wet.  Rain was predicted and I had to accept that at some point during this run, I was going to be rained on.  Luckily however, we started dry.  Its one thing to run in the rain (which I'm not particularly keen on to begin with) but to wait at the start while its bucketing down, is another! After what seemed like an eternity of waiting in Newlands, the canon was finally shot and the race began.  I started with my good friend and running partner, but we had not vowed to stay together for the duration of the race, both agreeing that we were going to run our own race and see what happens.  The first 10km went by fairly quickly and most of our chatter was about whether or not we were running at the appropriate pace to reach our goal.  At about the 10km mark, the rain started.  As expected, I got wet and cold...what was not expected however, was that 46km later, it would STILL be raining! But the talk of the rain and the giggling about it (once we had accepted that the rain was here to stay) got us to the half marathon mark in a bit of a blur! By now we were both feeling good and had settled into a nice rhythm and we started chatting about things other than the running and the weather we were running in.  As a result, the first big hill at Chapman's Peak was a bit of a non event for us both! We were a lot more comfortable than we ever could have hoped for and as we neared the marathon mark and the bottom of Constantia Nek (the second and worst major hill of the race), we had pretty much decided it would be silly not to finish this epic race together! We both had supporters waiting for us in Hout Bay and by pure luck, they happened to be standing right next to each other.  We had a welcome break and a chat to our families, before starting the last stretch to the finish line.  Because we had run a fairly conservative race up until that point, we were able to run up the whole 4km of steep up hill that is Constantia Nek.  As we started the descent, the next 8km or so were spent discussing how we couldn't believe we ran the entire thing and how close we now were to completing our first Ultra marathon.  We had more supporters waiting near the finish and that's what got us through those last few km's.  With about 3km to go, the rain started getting worse and we prepared ourselves for a muddy finish that would ruin our fabulous pink and purple running shoes.  We turned onto the field at UCT, all smiles and screams, despite the slippery mud that would usually make me pretty grumpy! At the end of 56km, I almost couldn't believe how amazing I felt and how comfortable the whole race seemed! Despite the weather, Two Oceans 2012 will definitely go down as one of my favourite races ever!