My first run – 2010 Lighthouse Run in Cape Town
Posted on Mar 04, 2010 under Running | 4 CommentsAfter some not too serious training but a good amount of excitement today was finally the day. The Lighthouse Ten Run 2010 was happening and for me it meant that my random running was about to become somehow more serious, as I was now measured not against myself or some computer program on my Phone, but ‘real’ people running next to me. Joining in was my ‘Sportsfreund’ Cecily, who followed my call for company on Facebook only a few days earlier.
Arriving early one hour prior to the scheduled start at 6.15pm was definitely a good idea, as it gave us great parking, no queues and time to chat to other fellow runners who told us about some of the processes with the archaic time measurement, though my only goal was to run the 10km in under one hour…
The run didn’t start on time, but was moved to the odd time of 6.22 to allow even the late birds to participate. Despite warnings from another friend to stand in front of the starterfield, we were just behind the middle of the field but everyone got moving quite quickly, so the delay for the last runners, before they could really start running shouldn’t be much more than two minutes, what I think is very reasonable for a run with much more than 1500 participants.
Race day was one of the hottest days and temperatures in Cape Town went up to 34°C I never found it to be a problem, as the sun was not burning too much anymore. The race itself was really beautiful and I could always manage my relaxed jogging speed of just under 6 minutes per km and did even manage a sprint for the last two kilometers, when I left Cecily behind. But see the Lighthouse run on Everytrail yourself that I recorded with my iPhone:
Only the last hundred-something meters were causing a big problem. Because so many runners arrived at the same time the congestion made people wait several minutes before they collected their finisher-number (mine was 932) and I’m interested to see how the organising club is going to tell us exactly what results we scored, as mine should’ve been somewhere between 56 and 57 minutes…
But this small problem that could be solved with a modern chip-based timing system and it did in no way destroy the beautiful experience that this run was for me – Thank you Atlantic Athletic Club Cape Town for organising such a wonderful event!
