Oh. My. God.
Just look. Just go and look.

Speaking of breathless. Matt's post on running his half marathon made me all nostalgic. I've been using the excuse of a moderately bum heel to not run for a while, but he's got me all excited again. When I was in South Africa, I ran two half marathons and thoroughly enjoyed both of them. The first, I was totally unprepared for--I had never run further than 12 km at that time and my previous 10k had been miserable [hint: never have a full pizza dinner an hour before attempting a serious run]. It was a mixture of two courses that I had run previously, and included the exact route of my very first 10k. I decided that my goal was to finish under two hours and five minutes and I was to take it very slowly. I remember hitting the 10k mark of this race feeling wonderful, until I asked someone for the time (I don't own a watch) and realized that it had taken me well over an hour to get to that point with more than halfway to go. The next section was a bit of a struggle and the massive hill at 16km nearly made me cry(I know how it feels, Matt). However, I was able to keep going and finished at 2 hours even. That night, my fellow Canadian in SA and I went to this superb concert at the soccer stadium in Soweto (Miriam Makeba, Hugh Masekela, Mandoza, Brenda Fassie, etc) where the only problem was that there were about 200 stairs separating me from the beer concession.

The second run, was if anything, even better. With a half already under my belt, I didn't have the same nauseous feeling at the beginning. I had made the trip into Cape Town, specifically to run this race, the Two Oceans Marathon, billed as the most beautiful race in the world. My aunt was running the full marathon (56 km) which is the real gem that goes from the Indian Ocean across the Cape to the Atlantic. I still ran the first 10k far too slow (about an hour again) but I was able to do the final, mostly uphill 11.1 k in 54 minutes, which is a pretty spiffy time for a turtle like me. That .1 km is important. 100 metres is never longer when you've thought you've just finished. Luckily, the masses of cheering people (waiting mostly for the top 56 km runners who were just behind me) were there to get me to the finish.

One day, I'll do it again...