Blue Medal, Two Oceans Marathon

Posted: April 12, 2015

A blue medal for the collection, that’s my positive view from the Two Oceans Ultra Marathon 2015.

It was tough but I made it over Ou Kaapse Weg and up Southern Cross Drive to get my medal just in time. The cut-off is 7 hours and I managed 6:47:17 which means I got a blue medal as opposed to 2013 when I managed a sub 6 hour for a bronze.

The 2015 fires in Cape Town forced the organisers to move the route away from Chapmans Peak and over Ou Kaapse Weg. My initial thoughts when the news came out was, “Is the route cut shorter?” and “Damn I love the views from Chapmans, this sucks”. The route wasn’t shorter and the views did not disappoint I didn’t miss Chapmans too much. The major challenge of Ou Kaapse Weg was that it was massive and started much earlier than Chapmans would have started. It meant that you needed to hold back and not use all your energy going up Ou Kaapse Weg, and not destroy your legs coming down the mountain because you still had another 20 km to the finish. This really screwed with my mind after I conquered this intimidating mountain I was so happy but still had another hill and 20 km to go! The second hill was Southern Cross Drive which is easier than the normal Constancia Nek route.

However when I got there I was broken and it felt pretty tough. I ended up passing the marathon mark (42.2 km) over 5 hours which is not great.

As usual the finish was amazing, commentator shouting about the cutt-off coming up and tons of people cheering me on through the finish line. Check out the picture of me stuffed at the finish.

Weather was awesome with a little drizzle in the beginning and cloudy weather throughout the race, if it was sunny the finish would have been even more tight.

I am relieved and very happy I finished the race, I got what I deserved a blue medal because my training was a little light this year. To date I got 2 bronze and a blue medal, now the next medal is Sainsbury (sub 5:00) which with training I might be able to get close too one day. My folks were in Cape Town and they really helped picking me up and cheering me on. Our Names and the amount of races you’ve done printed on your race number also added to the race. Crowd cheering your name and running behind someone that has done 20+ ultras (awesome).

I did something kind of crazy the next day I climbed up Lions Head (small mountain next to Table Mountain). I did this because I only had one day left in Cape Town and this has been on my todo list for a while (its one of Ryan Sandes’s favorite routes). Its only about 4 km up but very steep (330 m gain) and on sore legs it hurt, especially going down. It was totally worth it as the view up top is amazing. I cannot wait to walk up Table Mountain but will definitely not do it after a race.

FYI: Don’t climb Lions Head the day after running Two Oceans unless you a bit crazy I hurt so much!