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Thursday, May 16, 2013

Jive Slave Route Challenge - 12 May 2013

It's been a while since I blogged, lots of happenings the past few months / years has unfortunately kept me busy. I recently became a father which has naturally changed my whole outlook on life - that however is another story or blog for another day. I thought I would start off my re-entry into the blogging world with a review of the Jive Slave Route Challenge 21km Race I did on the 12 May 2013.I started running about a year ago, a bit of first following friends and family who were doing it, I found that I quite enjoyed it. I'm not yet quite the professional but try and train as much as I can where possible. For this particular race my second half marathon my training consisted of running a 10km race the weekend before and 2 sessions in the gym in the week. Not the best training I admit. The race started at 7am, I did my registration beforehand which ensured I did not have to register on the day, always good to avoid last minute rushing around and stress on the day to get registered in time for the start of the race. I arrived in Cape Town about 6:30 and parked at the Golden Acre Mall Parking, the roads were quite busy in the vicinity of the start for a Sunday Morning. The pre-race speeches were given by the sponsors representatives as well as quick good luck by the mayor Patricia De Lille. The start was not the usual bang from a gun but boom from the canon on top of Signal Hill. We started promptly at 7am from the City Hall , our run took us for the first time through Cape Town Castle – only the beginning of a historical journey through District Six past the Cape Technikon and the two mosques in that road, Gardens and Wale Street. The next stop was the Bo’Kaap with the highlight for me being the steep hill aptly named Koesiester Hill. There was a lot of support from the residents of Bo-Kaap for that portion of the race, with some residents even offering us tasty Koesisters upon our conclusion of this hill. What followed as a further 9km flat run through the Fan Walk, Green Point Park, V&A Waterfront and then finishing back where we started on the Grand Parade. This is undoubtedly one of the most beautiful races in Cape Town, it was brilliantly organized and I would highly recommend any runner to do it once in their life. My time was just under 2:30 which I aimed for, off my personal best but I was quite pleased considering my lack of training beforehand as well and the fact that this was quite a tough course. For those not so serious runners there is also a 10km run, 5km run and 10km walk offered. Not sure of the amount of people that did the races but it was well attended, I would estimate about 1500 people might have done the 21km race. All in all a great race, great atmosphere that I will look forward to doing another slave route challenge next year. Till the next blog post see you around. (Photo taken from www.itheko.org 2011)


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