Stats: Thursday, 11 February 2010, 06:00

This morning saw 3 Hillbillies hit the road - Josh, Brett and myself - for what was supposed to be a short and easy (recovery!) run around Rondebosch. Short it was, but easy??? I think that after Tuesday's hill start, our legs were expecting to work hard today again, but with no hills to climb, that translated to a slightly faster pace instead. I'm sure we all felt like we'd worked hard by the end of the run, but every hillbilly finished strong and in good spirits, so we didn't over-do it at least. Josh set the pace, with Brett and I following hot on his heels. I got quite a shock when I looked at my watch just after we turned onto Campground Road, and saw that we were clocking nearly 5m30/km!! I'd say that qualifies this morning as a very definite 'tempo' run! It also proved that we're all getting fitter than ever.


The route, briefly went like this:
Starting at our usual spot in front of Great Westerford, we hit Newlands Avenue from Dean Street, then turned down the M3 for a short downhill. Protea Road took us over Main and past Newlands Cricket, after which we turned up Campground (aka Landsdowne, aka Liesbeek) and headed for a brief water break at the Shell. Having learnt our lesson on Tuesday about crossing Liesbeek in the traffic, we opted for the subway instead this morning. From here we hit Belmont Road, over the railway bridge, followed by a short stretch of Main Road taking us back Great Westerford.

Route Profile:

Route Map:

Next week we'll do a slightly shorter long run - pretty much this morning's route, but instead of turning left onto Campground we'll just continue straight over and follow Keurboom through to Milner. From here we head up towards the Common (we can take a vote on Tuesday morning when we reach the Common as to whether we continue around the common for a 14-ish km run, or just cut along the lower edge towards the water point for a 12km run). Water at the Shell, then head back to the same way we went today.

Just a note - this route does not have adequate water (first/only water point is the Shell on Campground Road), so bring along a small botter of water if you feel you need it for a 12-14km run. We should reach the water point at around 10km if we don't go around the Common.

As usual, Tuesday's run starts at 05:30, but I think that we'll have to start pushing it back out to 06:00 again before too long, as the morning's are starting to get darker again.