I won’t lie this whole Two Oceans Half Marathon just appeared out of nowhere and caught me a little bit off guard. So I registered this morning at the Good Hope centre in Cape Town which was it’s usual mess. And it was packed with all the usual keen people who are just DYING to show the world that they are runners.

Honest to God, people arrive in those disgusting polly shorts that show off more than I care to see, running shoes and tree trunk legs thinking that this impresses people. It doesn’t impress me or anyone else. I on the other hand arrive hanging, with army pants on and a white t-shirt. Like a rock star on his way to White Castle.

I also cycle (Mountain biking) but I’m never quite sure why around the time of events such as the Argus cycle tour, people find it necessary to walk around in their cycling kit. Can you imagine if you were a wakeboarder, just walking around with a lifejacket on? Or holding your board under your arm? No. My point exactly.

So I arrive to find the crowd of short, stocky people who think that running is a religion. The conversation is of fast and slow twitch muscle fibres, V02 max and lactic threshhold levels. All I was thinking about was how pumping the beach is going to be today.

No jokes I completely forgot to train for this event and the first and last time that I ran 21km’s was this time last year for this event. Great pain awaits me.

I took an unconventional approach to this years half marathon by not training. I have all my kit ready as seen below.

Kitted out

As you can see we have Nike Shox to stop my knees from imploding and my ankles from shattering, a Polar heart rate monitor to predict at which point on the route I will die, a Nike Dri-Fit t-shirt to soak up the river I’m going to sweat and two bottles of liquid pain killers for the sheer onslaught of pain that I’m inflicting on my body.Yeah otherwise it’s a pretty normal Friday. Can’t complain too much. My body’s downfall is imminent so I think I will spend today in the sun with a cold one while my pecs turn a bronze colour and Gisele Bundchen smears me in coconut oil before massaging my feet and feeding me fresh fruit.

Then we go back to the Villa and hammer out a couple of Gisellings.

I’m amped.

Sean Lloyd

Editor