The Van Rensburgs

After: we all sat down to a fantastic breakfast at a cafe in Howick on Monday. From the left: Kimmy, Monique, me, Corinne and Stephen. Note Kim's awesome new haircut. Everyone had a good weekend.










Before: Stephen managed to be chipper even after a 40th birthday party the night before. It wasn't his! I told him that I usually breakfast in similar surroundings, and the red wine complimented the porridge nicely.

Kim managed to snap me just before the finish line. And then after it, when I was buckled.

The Comrades Marathon

That was the Comrades Marathon then. I finished in 6,050th place out of something over 12,000, so I am pretty happy, yet amazed that so many bloody people managed to run it so fast. These South Africans don't bugger about. In Britain, the London Marathon is the biggy, really and folk will do it once or twice. Here they double and a bit the length and folk do it 4, 5, double figures of times. First time runners are in the minority.

And it is really, really hard. Each year the direction changes from uphill (durban to pietermaritzburg) to downhill. This year was a down run. I had spoken to people who had done it before. EVERYONE said that down is harder. Yet I still managed to find some male arrogance to think that it can't be that bad and my knees are nails-hard. Running down hill takes less energy and pain is all in the mind.

Well, it just bashes you guts about like billy-o. Pain is not in your mind, it is in your knees and ankles and shoulders and stomach and back and toes and chafing... Every drop of liquid that has gone in gets sloshed about, as your internal organs splat around against the more solid bits of anatomy. Ankles that were previously reliable start to feel a bit edgey and knees lose their bounce.

Fields Hill was the real bugger. After about 40 and a bit miles, you start pouring down this long, sustained motorway hill, with an absolute bastard of a camber. My brain was already wrecked because I thought that I had already done Fields Hill (maybe I was aslo wrong to go in blind to the route!). Nope, that was another long sustained downhill. Little things like that really depress one when one is tired.

Kilometer markers lose their charm in the second half and your brain feels tired of figuring out how far and how long and how fast. Done 45k, only a marathon to go. Done 59, only 30 to go. Only 10 to go now but I am very tired and I am slowing down. The worst moment for me was when I was nearing a marker and I thought it was going to say "2k to go". It actually said "Screw you Pete, you have 3k to go. You are an idiot. Why did you not pay more attention? Why are you running so slowly? Why don't you just give up you worthless piece of...". Impressive that they could write all of that on one small sign. It was an upsetting time for me as I watched 10 and a half hours slip away from me.

Visualisation is very important. I started with visions of me tearing across the finish line with Kim there waiting for me for a big hug and a kiss. That was a good one and lasted me through halfway. Spurred me on big time. As time went on though, it disolved into daydreams of me just having a nice lie-down at the finish, which is dangerously close to "ooh, I could have a nice lie-down now". Put some music on and keep going.

The start had been ace. Everyone in paper t-shirts (to cast off) huddled together and listened to a blaring 'Chariots of Fire'. It was 05:30 and just to be hanging around a South African city in the dark felt like an achievement. My dreams came true when some zulu women did that awesome "Li-li-li-li-li-li-li" thing. I felt a bit like I was on the tube when some oak (guy) asked "can you please move down that way a bit so we can all get in?". And we sang Shosholoza, which is a stirring workmans song about moving forward (down the mines). The excitement was palpable. No nerves, just a good buzz and a setting of the mind to do your own thing. Then they go off and you go too fast anyway because doing your own thing is boring.

The first half of the race is undulating but hovers about 600-700 meters. When I went down Polly Shortts (the first of the big five hills), I thought that the up run would be absolute murder because you would meet Polly after 80k. After halfway you start to wend your way downhill towards 0, running into the heat, towards the big city.

The support is tremendous, with people offering all sorts of random fuel as well as big tubs of vaseline (thanks) and salt for the cramps. There are braais everywhere. Actually the most amazing support was near the start. The people of Pietermaritzburg got up early to cheer us on and it meant a lot.

Hydration is tricky to say the least. There is water, coke and Powerade at each station and they come every 2k. I took to mixing coke with water and chopping and changing that with Powerade. Sometimes I had to neck some straight water. Over the course of the race I ate about 2 to 2 and a half bananas, 2 baby potatoes with salt, 8 jelly babies, a (very) mini Bar One (Marsbar), a quarter orange. It was not enough and I had to batter in the Powerade to get calories in. Back to sloshing and the onset of nausea.

Stephen, thanks for the porridge for brekkie. I would not have made it without that. More about the Van Rensburgs to follow...

At 12:00:00 the gun was fired and the race was over. I clung to the fence and Kim and watched as the last guy (who happened to have overcome an 11 year heroin addiction - well done) crossed the line. The guy behind him collapsed as though he had been shot. I cannot imagine running for 12 hours and missing it by seconds. I nearly cried. Luckily I am not soft, so I held it together. We stayed to applaud the next few who looked devastated. It is a heartbreaking thing to see and they had it much harder than me because they were on their feet for longer.

Yes I would like to do the up run. But not for a while. And I will train much harder next time. I am delighted with my time and how the race went. The weather could not have been more forgiving. Also, I am very thankful for all the great messages of support people sent me. They mean so much.

After vomitting and feeling awful for an hour, I realised that the only liquid that I could feasably ingest (water does nothing, no salts; anything sweet was impossible) was beer. Yes, beer. Beer made me feel better. Beer for ultramarathon recovery. Beer is the ultimate sports drink. Beer? Yes. Beer.

Pretend I posted this last week.

One week to go now until Comrades and I am really excited. It is a huge event and all South African’s seem to know about it. 12,000 odd runners and lots of history. I feel pretty fit now and don’t (touch wood) have any injuries, so I think I can manage it. The weather will be the biggest factor and if I don’t finish it, I think it will be humidity that does for me. If, by some miracle, it is cool I am going to bash it out good and proper.

It is going to be nice to be in a city again too. Last night we were gutting ourselves laughing as we sat round the fire pit as another chicken cock-crowed at the wrong time and then a bunch of goats went off too. The dogs followed suit and completed this Transkei symphony. Yes, it is mental here.

As we sat there digesting the fillet, we put the world to rights. The fillet was good with the George’s Marvelous Medicine marinade. No complaints, anyway. And we have leftovers today.

Talk turned to race and incentives for societal improvements. We often go back over the turf of the hand-out culture, the education (and other infrastructure) deficit in the black community, and the fact that SA is very young indeed. Liz was saying that the first Apartheid laws came in back in 1920-ish. So if it took that long to set it up, it will take a bloody long time to reverse.

I am getting a little obsessed with how that impacts on my work. And how can we make helpful projects that are what the community wants and needs and that can last and thrive when we bugger off. There just isn’t a supply of IT literate workers here, who could run projects. Fortunately, Kate the therapist just did a thesis on community engagement in Zithulele, so I am off to have a read of it (exec summary at least!).

My gut feeling is that the solution is to plan for a stream of external expertise to come in for the short and medium term and build projects, in full consultation with the community, at all times involving community people and looking to education to support. We also could use a needs assessment done of Zithulele and a continuation of the community engagement strategy that my predecessor started.

It is hard to ask people what they think they need for their community without prejudicing the discussion with possible solutions. “What would you like for the community, a library?”, “Yes please, I would like a library.”

There is a cross-over here with my old job at the Department for Transport. We were at pains to try to identify what the transport problems of the main UK corridors (ports to cities, between cities and so on) are, without messing it up with thinking of existing motorways and projects that already exist in the planning stage. There are tonnes of existing proposals for motorway improvement out there and it is hard to take a blank sheet look at congestion, for example, when there is already expectation there.

Interesting. Or not. For ‘not’ read previous entry on poo.

If at any point you get bored with this chat, please feel free to send me some abuse, via the comments section.

photo explanation

Those last two pictures didn't get an explanation. The one is of us playing a game of 'ultimate'. Some people call it Ultimate Frizbee, but they are WRONG. The real name is ultimate, according to our awesome amaerican dvd on the matter. and the game is really good fun. Man, I never did this sort of thing at home. having said that, i rode a bike with a basket on the front in japan. nice how the rules of what is cool/acceptable change when you are far away. we play every monday night, but this one was at hole in the wall at the weekend. beach is besto!

The second picture is how i am going to win the world photo championships. as you will see, i have taken a photo of a white person's hand and a black person's hand. the ink on each is to show they have voted in the south african general election. the way i have brought to mind that race is a key issue, but that everyone is in it together and all votes count, is probably what will give me the edge. well done, me. sometimes i am so deep i can hardly even hear me, i just get a wierd echo.

The beautiful Transkei

Here we have two shots from the journey to Bulungula. The one from a drive inlandyways and the other fromt the coastal walk. Pretty good both ways really.

Beach Times

Spuit-poep

Yes. Pronounced “shpate-poop”, it means ‘squirt-fart’ in Afrikaans and I have got it. Or rather, I had it. It is all in the preparation for a big race. It means that you didn’t train enough until the last minute so your body hates you and resorts to diahorreah (which I can never spell).
One week to go and there is nothing more I can do to get fitter now. I just have to trust that I can crawl the 55 miles from Pietermaritzburg to Durban in under 12 hours.

Actually, I just read about an HIV positive dude who is doing it to show that you can do so, despite being on anti-retroviral medicine. He is more hardcore than me, but I am not telling you who he is, so you will just have to sponsor me instead. Ha!

If you want to sponsor me, please look at http://www.jabulanifoundation.org/help.html to find out how to make a bank payment.

So off to Pietermaritzburg next weekend to stay with more of Gareth’s friends (who all seem to be utterly awesome). Kim is excited about shopping in a big city and I am not. The run is on Sunday and I will try to write something on Monday or Tuesday to let you know exactly which hospital I got sent to after collapsing after how many kilometres.

Folk have been really generous in sponsoring me, even Chris Horne who protested that I only write when I am asking for money. Sorry Chris, I love you really. Chris and I used to smash eachother in the face (thai boxing) for a hobby. Well, I smashed his face, he couldn’t really reach mine. Now we are both unable to muster more than about 4 press-ups and 2 squats – the mighty are fallen. I do miss the old boxing a great deal, but running is fun too and (hopefully) no-one hits you when you are running.

Braai time this weekend! And it shall be in the fire pit of destiny. We are taking it back to the old school with wood and paper to start, rather than lighters.

I have just made a marinade which will be applied to a massive-o fillet for 24 hours. The marinade is as follows, red wine (bottle of), Old Brown Sherry, onion, garlic, course grain mustard, Worcester sauce, chillis, sunflower oil, bay leaf, salt, pepper. If it tastes awful I have wasted a heck of a lump o meat. So fingers crossed please. I told myself yesterday that I would stay off the booze until after the race. Now I want a beer more than I want to see my niece. That is a bit unfair, but she is not here in my fridge, taunting me. I would rather see Isla than have a beer. Maybe I could look at Facebook and then have a beer. NO!

I thought about work (DfT) the past few days. Decided to write an e-mail to some folks there. Then realised that I should asked for sponsorship whilst at it. Then felt bad because I only write when I am asking for money. It is hard being me, with my brain talking shit to me, sometimes. I wrote anyway.

I read a book called the three letter plague recently. It is really good, if you like reading about HIV. I usually give up on books that are good for me, but this one was really engaging and easy going. Sad stuff in there, but very human and interesting. It is all about ARV programmes in rural SA, so very relevant. I sat in with Doctor Liz and one of the ARV counsellors this week as I am going to recruit a new counsellor soon, so I wanted to see what they do. She was a great translator. The most interesting bit was when a guy came in with his wife. He was just going onto ARVs and she was already on them. Liz quizzed him through the counsellor about “how long do you have to take ARVs?” (the rest of your life) and “what do the ARVs do?” (they boost your bodies soldiers and suppress the disease). She then spilled a box of assorted pills onto the table and asked him to put aside which ones he would take in the morning and name them. He got it all right so high hopes. It is important to have someone to help you with this stuff so it is cool that he has his wife going through the same thing. By the same token though, saw another woman who was happy to find out that her baby was negative.

So me and Sally have made an application form and we shall see how many applicants we get. Interviewing is not going to be like DfT. Competency based interviews are a thing of the past to me and I think it is back to the old gut feeling and asking hypothetical questions. When someone is long term unemployed, you can’t ask them if they have had relevant experience. We just need someone with good English (purely to translate for the doctors) who is organised and has initiative. Sounds simple enough.

Kim is back from the hospital from where she got called this evening. She is on call all weekend so we are here. It is nice in a way to hang around Zithulele and potter. Poor Kim has the Spuit-poep now, but I don’t think there is anyone to take her place. Grim.

Losing a blog

Losing a blog you’ve typed is miserable, it never seems genuine when you retype it. So I’m going to instead write a new version of the old one I just tried to post and lost...

Firstly, I’d like to inform you all that I have been paid. Yup. Awesome.

Secondly, I have had a good week so far, mainly cos I’m not oncall this week at all which is great. Did have a baby die this morning, but they were very sick form birth. Also one of the pregnant mums dies over the w/e, which sucks, but also expected. She was HIV+ve and had defaulted (stopped herself) taking her ARV meds (antiretroviral meds for HIV). She came in in end stage AIDs with no immune response to speak of. We put her on TB treatment but she died shortly after a premature labour delivering her dead baby. Sad. And apparently we now have a problem with the ARVs supplies from the drugs people and only have enough for 1 week unless they send more. This is a disaster since when taking ARVs it is vital not to forget any tabs or have any break since the HIV virus mutates v quickly and if given half a chance will become resistant to the ARVS, then you are screwed.

ON to cheerier thing, I am on a new fitness regime. I promised myself I’d return from SA a tanned svelte goddess, and so far that hasn’t been realised (mostly due to stress induced chocolate/crisp gobbling). Kim = tan – svelte goddess currently. So, I am now a founding member of ‘The Fit Four’ which consists of me, Monique and Liz (both work at hosp) and our new personal trainer Peter Grant. He is delighted because he gets to boss us around a lot. We are pleased because someone tells us what to do. Win win. He is running a secret circuits class from our living room twice a week. It is secret and we don’t want to spread the word because a) not enough room in our living room for loads of sweaty people b) don’t want other annoying super fit girls to turn up and put me to shame (I’m horrid aren’t I?) and c) because the name
‘The Fit Four’ reminds me of Famous Five and they always had a secret or two.

Anyway, Pete’s been really resourceful eg using the step outside for step up exercises, using 5L water bottles for weights, incorporating thai boxing stuff too. The down side is we have to listen to his music tastes because he’s made a playlist for ‘workout time’. He even downloaded a timer from the internet which beeps at minute intervals for the circuit changes – I think he’s found a new vocation. We are slightly scared of him in trainer mode though. He has threatened that if he sees us eating chocolate or crisps he is allowed to shout “drop and give me twenty”. Oh crap!
This w/e should be fun. Off to a place called Hole in The Wall, so named because of the cliff out to sea which has been eroded away making a hole (see picture). Eight of us are staying in this big house and we plan on plenty of Braai action, Frisbee, reading, sunbathing. Maybe go to whiteclay for calamari. Awesome.

The following w/e I’m working, then the one after is Durban time for Comrades race for Pete. I’m excited since Monique and Liz are going too and they’re from Durban and know the shops and sights well. Oh yes, clothes shopping here I come, I have been starved of civilisation for months now, and SA has rubbish clothes shops. However, they’ve promised me that Durban is awesome for shopping. Pete is ok with all this as long as I’m at the finish line on the Sunday. Fortunately for me it isn’t like WHW race, and no support group is allowed. Shucks, gutted!! No ambrosia cream rice/flapjack rocky bucket mess. So, I’ll just have to spend the time wisely, by shopping.

So, the Fit Four tour to Durban soon, though only Peter will be exercising that w/e – unless you count carrying clothes to the changing rooms to try on as a kind of exercise? I’ll let you know how it goes.

Hole in the Wall

Can't really see the hole, but the wall is the rock out there far right.