During a mid-December Sunday lunch with a couple of beers under the belt I agreed to join my cousin and friend and run ½ marathon, and was the Dischem 21km which was held this past Sunday the 13th of Jan, this was to be my 1st race longer that 12km.
Been December and with all the extra braai’s and Xmas and new year’s parties no training was done. Come the 2nd of Jan and I decided that I should start doing some training, as my fitness level was just below average having last visited the gym mid-November.
I can now say that it is possible to run a 21km under 3 hours with less than 2 weeks training and just 6 training runs under your belt. Also to put in perspective I weigh in at 105kg and am 1.83m tall. Come race day the 1st thing we experience was traffic taking about 30min to find a parking spot along Van Buuren Rd and we were still about a 1km away from the start.
This meant that we were 20min late for the start of the race. ( we were not the only one’s) with in the 1st 4km I managed to catch up to the back marks and get to the 1st water table. All you could see on the ground was little coke cola cups and empty blue water packets. This was to be expected around the watering tables but from here on the rest of the course was littered with these little blue packets.
I was horrified as there were plenty of bins along the route. I saw many a runner throw there empty packets on the floor when they had either just passed a bin or there was one coming up with in the next couple of meters. All I could think to my self was what a bunch of pigs road runners are.
I have run a few trail runs and you never find this type of mess, yes there may only be a 10th of the people around 600 but we make sure that we put or cups/litter in the bins provided or keep it until the end. The volunteers were fantastic and saw plenty of them cleaning up the utter filth that was left behind. I even almost got into an altercation when one of the runners who was walking past a volunteers cleaning up dropped his packet 2 meters further on where it had just cleaned.
I was told to “F*** OFF and it’s their job” when I asked what he was doing. Well NO it is not their job’s to clean up after pigs like yourself. I was even more horrified when running down A.G De Witt were the last water table was. There were bins every 20 meters but I could see the bottom of every single bin. Yet the road was now a blue wet slippery death trap.
I would like to thank all the volunteers that gave up their Sundays to ensure our safety and provide us with much needed hydration. And a huge thanks for cleaning up after the Filthy pigs. The volunteers were always friendly and helpful.
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