And Then I Woke Up at 4 and Ran 13 Miles.

A little background that most of you already know: I am not an athlete. At all. Cross country in middle school hardly counts, since it was six years ago. In the entire year 2009, I’m pretty sure I ran 10 miles total, and that’s being generous. So when someone mentioned running Cape Town’s half-marathon in January, I was hardly keen. Then I found out it was called the Two Oceans, which actually interested me: what other opportunity am I ever going to have to run from one ocean to another (even if you do have to climb up and over a mountain to do it?) It turned out, though, that it was something of a misnomer; only the ultra marathon (39 miles) actually runs next to both oceans. Disappointment.

But then I got to thinking that all of you back home would probably be somewhat surprised if I ran a half marathon while I was here. And what if I didn’t tell you until I actually ran it? You don’t get a chance to keep a ten-week secret from everyone you know on a regular basis. How on earth could I pass up an opportunity like that? I thought about how nobody would believe me, and how gloriously satisfying it would be to try to convince you all that it was true, and I was sold. I would train and run a half marathon.

So that’s how my laziness got trumped by my… orneriness? Contrary nature? Snark? I don’t know. You pick.

And it really turned out to be a great experience. First off, when Meghan and I were training we saw so much of Cape Town. We did runs on the Indian coast, the Atlantic coast, on the slopes of Table Mountain, and all around the Flats. It occurred to me on my second or third run just why, exactly, my mom always loves to go running when we’re on vacation: you seriously get to know and appreciate the area so much better. And we accumulated so many experiences too: we met a whole cast of interesting people on the trains and in the taxis and learned how to cross roads like assertive South Africans instead of timid American tourists. Once, when we ran to Rhodes Memorial, we came upon a church having a worship service in front of the monument, and they let us join in. We memorized entire neighborhoods and found new cafes and boutiques, and learned quite a bit about how the weather can change drastically from the flats to the hills. We watched surfers and kayakers, and we got equally acquainted with the giant estates of shady Constantia and the homeless taking shelter under bridges and along railway lines. Actually, come to think of it, much of what I’ve learned about South African society and class structure I’ve picked up from just getting out and running in different neighborhoods.

So that was training: 157 miles in 10 weeks, according to the tally I’ve been keeping on my shoe. Race Day was a different story.

A rough recreation of a race thought-process

0km: it’s raining lightly. Seriously? This many people want to run 21k?? Do they know what time it is? A spritely 50+ woman named Rosemary notes our orange international tags and wants to know if we’ve flown in just for the half-marathon. (I mean, we are American, so of course we have that kind of money.) She’s run five half-marathons and one ultra in twenty years; she says running has changed her life. Meghan and I make mental notes to become Rosemarys someday. The gun goes off at 6:00; they’re playing “I’ve Got a Feeling.” Figures. It’s South Africa’s quasi-national anthem, after all.

2km: Sooooooooooo many people. We keep walking, then jogging, then walking. I’m surprised nobody is getting trampled, honestly. Sometimes they open the sidewalk so we can run around the mob, but it’s not doing a whole lot. I accidentally think of that line in Mulan, “in our thundering herd we feel a lot like cattle,” and then A Girl Worth Fighting For is stuck in my head for the next 8k’s. Dang.

“BRENNA!” It’s really weird to hear your name when you’re in that big a crowd. I look over to the sidewalk and there are Lindo and Joelle and Lee Ann! They woke up to see me run at 6:00 in the morning! And they FOUND me! Oh happiness. I love my host family. I can totally run this half marathon.

3km: the first water stop. The Powerade and water are in little plastic bags. Don’t bother tearing them open with your fingers; just bite them open and suck the liquid out. People are dropping full ones on the road and when you step on them they’re like mini water balloons exploding. They’re also handing out Coke? Gross.

5km: the first hill. Wow. You don’t actually see it; you just see throngs and hordes of people moving up the road. (I wonder what the exodus out of Egypt looked like.) That’s nice, in a way: when you can’t see the hill, you can’t feel the hill. Simple as that.

9km: Still feeling great, which is a good thing. The sun is finally up and and we’re doing a dog-leg, so I can actually see individual people for the first time. There’s a couple of women in tutus and a Superman. A lot of people are in the 50 or 60 age bracket. Good for them. There’s one gray-haired patriarch and an entire clan running around him with signs that say “Happy 81^st birthday, Grandpa.” (I’m guessing. It’s Afrikaans.) And instead of foam fingers, people have foam Usain Bolt arms. Not a bad idea: they give you two feet of space on either side, which would be nice in this horde.

11km: We’re half-way done! And we’re coming up on the biggest, most threatening hill of the race: Southern Cross Drive. We pass two guys sitting on their couch outside their house, watching us. How unfair. We walk through the waterstop at the bottom of the hill. Where’s Meghan??? I’ve lost her… argh all these people. It’s ridiculous. Okay. There she is at the top of the stop. We can do this. We’ve trained this hill before. And as awful as it is having all these people to trip over (the walk/runners are particularly frustrating), they really do make the hills psychologically easier.

14km: TOP OF SOUTHERN CROSS! Hurrah! A church group has a banner across the top: “Come to me, all you who are weary, and I will give you rest.” Ha. Way to be, my Christian friends: get ‘em when they’re down. We pass two fainted runners in the space of two blocks. That’s really sobering. My knee is starting to ache; it’s the downhill. Suddenly I hate downhills more than uphills. We pass a New Castle stand with a sign: ‘Less than 8k to beer!!’ Oh dear.

16km: I am feeling fan-freaking-tastic, to borrow a Liz Cheesman phrase. I should run a half marathon every year for the rest of my days. We’re no longer going downhill or uphill (joy), we’ve got this beautiful view of the mountain as we run past Kirstenbosch, they’re blaring music, there’s people cheering and vuvuzelas blasting… this is bliss.

19km. Kill me now. My knee is threatening to implode. We’ve left the shade and we’re out in the sun and suddenly there’s so much noise, and there’s still so many people. Aaargh. My knee stopped us short on last Saturday’s run but it’s been mostly fine this whole run—why now? Thankfully for me Meghan’s in a bad way too so we stop for a minute. Okay. Pull through to the end.

21.1km. When we hit the grass my knee feels instantly better. Okay. We’re at the end. I can see the green bridge ahead and we put on a full sprint. (Why do I have enough energy left to sprint? I must not have been running fast enough before.) I can see the carpet-covered pad that will read the chip in my shoe… success! We’ve finished!! …so why is everyone else still running?

Ah. Because, just like on my eight-mile La Vida run, I haven’t actually sprinted to the finish line. I’ve sprinted to the 100-meters-until-you’re-actually-finally-done line. (Why do they even have those?? I can’t tell you how incredibly frustrating that is.) But now I can see the legitimate end (It says ‘FINISH’ so let’s hope it’s the right one) and there’s a clock. It’s approaching 2:25… and we run in at 2:25:04.

And it ends just like it started: we’re standing stock-still in a herd of people funneling out of the gate while they blast “I’ve Got a Feeling.” How about that?

So anyway, that’s that. There’s pictures on Facebook if you want to see them (as well as pictures from camping and regular life that I just uploaded). I absolutely loved the whole thing—and Meghan and I have completely bonded, to say the least. I’m seriously considering training for a full marathon in October. I just need to see if I have time.

Comings and Goings

On Monday we leave for ten days in the Eastern Cape, which kind of marks the third phase of our semester, if you count our three-week interim and then a term at Cornerstone as our first and second. It’s strange to be this far already, and as much as I’m glad to finally be done with papers and exams, I wish we’d have had more time to spend with Cornerstone friends in and around Cape Town. From here on out we aren’t going to have much of a regular schedule anymore and we’ll be doing a good amount of traveling. So here are a few highlights from life and leisure in and around the Cape Flats.

Taxi-riding. This isn’t a single outing like the rest of them, but it’s definitely one of the most interesting things I’ve done here. First off, to differentiate between the two: cabs are for tourists and the generally well-to-do, where you ride privately and pay per kilometer. Taxis are white vans with three or four rows of backseats, cost 80 American cents a ride, are usually packed full of people, and are always more entertaining, to say the least. I took my sixteenth taxi ride this afternoon. Some of our most memorable experiences include:
--that time we met a previous Cornerstone lecturer who recognized us not only as Americans, but as Bethel students
--sitting next to two Xhosa women who were absolutely fascinated with our accents, our clothes, and the fact that we as Americans would choose to ride in a taxi
--sitting next to a coloured man who was equal parts delighted and surprised to find himself sitting next to Americans and graciously helped us make our way through the labyrinthine Wynberg depot from one taxi to the next
--trying to cram twelve bags of groceries (along with three people) into a taxi that was already full
--the time the door fell off as we got out

Winetasting. The drinking age here is 18, and the hills and mountains just east of Cape Town are renowned wine country, so Joelle took Mourette and me wine tasting with some friends of hers in the beginning of February. I really don’t know much about wine at all, but it was still a really neat experience. The vineyard was absolutely beautiful and we tasted six types of wine along with at least a dozen cheeses for under $2. I’m almost ashamed to say that I was a little woozy after the tasting, but it was worth it. We finished off with coffee and scones in a beautiful grassy arbor afterwards, which was the perfect ending to the experience.

Valentine’s Day Dance. This is an annual event at Cornerstone, and I’m guessing that probably one of its strongest annual traditions is for the American students to arrive overdressed. We organized a shopping trip to the mall in advance and did a hurried version of the whole high school formal dress-hair-and-makeup-together prep routine only to arrive and find that not only were we just a tad dressier than we needed to be, but that the dance’s red-and-black theme was intended for apparel as well as venue decoration. It was really fun though; at that point we didn’t know many of the Cornerstone kids that well and it was a good chance to bond. Afterwards some of us went back to a host family’s house, ordered midnight pizza from St. Elmo’s (much better than Scooter’s or Debonair’s, if you were wondering), and watched South Africa Broadcasting’s version of the Winter Olympics’ opening ceremonies: one hour of only the highlights. As it should be.

Lion’s Head. This is one of my favorite experiences so far. Lion’s Head is a mountain (only about 2/3 the height of Table Mountain) that stands above the City Bowl, and I climbed it with a handful of other Americans and Cornerstone friends the Monday after we got back from Jo’Burg. Seeing as the climb started practically 75% of the way up the mountain, the hike to the top was pretty easy—just a few places where you use chains to get up the rock face when it’s too steep for a trail. We timed our climb for sunset at the full moon, and it was absolutely breathtaking (another random first: I’ve never actually see the sun set over the ocean before). I’ve seen pictures of the nigh lights of Cape Town, but it’s another thing entirely to see it in person. To add to the perfection: my aunt and uncle sent me off to South Africa with a giant bag of M&M’s, and through unprecedented levels of self-control, I managed to save them for two months. They were the perfect accompaniment to a South African moonrise.
I have to say, though, that one of the most memorable parts of the experience was the hike down, which wouldn’t have been bad if it hadn’t been night, a sudden gale hadn’t come up out of nowhere, and if my flashlight wasn’t dying. A visual memory I will probably take to the grave: trying to climb down a rickety metal ladder in the dark, with a massive wind promising to pluck me off and toss me over the barbed wire and down the mountain face. I’m sure it wasn’t really that dramatic, but at the time it definitely seemed a big deal.

Rugby. We’ve heard from the beginning that American football is for wimps, so we decided to see just how intense rugby really is by going to a game in Newlands. Our Stormers completely pummeled New Zealand’s Highlanders, in terms of the score but also physically. (At one point, I think the player-medic ratio on the field was 3:1.) I liked it despite myself, with that little guilty part of me that probably would have secretly enjoyed bear baitings in Elizabethan England. And it’s true: I’m forever ruined for watching American football. It’s not nearly as engaging.

Kirstenbosch. March 21 is Human Rights Day, so last Monday we had a public holiday and our friend Ben took us to Kirstenbosch: this beautiful sprawling botanical garden on the bottom slopes of Table Mountain. It was absolutely breathtaking, and I can only imagine how it must look in earlier summer, when all the flowers are in bloom. I could probably spend a week exploring Kirstenbosch and still feel I hadn’t seen my fill. There’s just so much of it, and it’s all worth looking at, from the sculpture garden to the forests to the fynbos and the trails leading up into the mountain. Ben was full of personal anecdotes, too, of childhood adventures in the garden. It makes me wish I had grown up there.

Braais. So far, I’ve been to seven or eight braais here, as they’re generally the standard hang-out or social gathering. It’s basically a barbecue with at least three different kinds of meat, plus pap (a maize meal with the texture/consistency of mashed potatoes) and then whatever salads or chips you might want to add. I’m not wild about eating all that meat, but I think braaing is one of the things I’ll miss most about South Africa.

Camping. To celebrate finally being on holiday, seven of us Americans and six Cornerstone friends went camping in Betty’s Bay this week (south and east of Cape Town, down below False Bay). It was so much fun. We went cliff jumping at these beautiful freshwater pools up in the mountains, had a morning on the beach by the campsite, and spent a rainy day curled up in a café overlooking the ocean. But really what we did was sit around the campfire for three full days, just talking and eating and playing Mafia. It was a much-needed break from the school routine, and it was so wonderful to basically sit and do nothing for days on end. The people that I’m with here are really just incredible. It’s crazy to think that I didn’t know any of them until January, and it’s painful to think I’ll have to say goodbye to all of them in May. But I really am grateful for the time I’ve had—especially this camping trip.