My First 10km Marathon.

"We are different, in essence, from other men. If you want to win something, run 100 meters. If you want to experience something, run a marathon."

Emil Zatopek

I usually Run 5km on Saturday's early in the morning, that is if I had a sober friday night which happens but does not happen as often as i would like. I do the 5km in about 00:33.15. Let's say I average 33 minutes and if I am having a good run I can go under 30 minutes, that only happens if I didn't even touch a wink of alcohol for that week preceding the run. Great Run Africa was where I lost my marathon virginity. My very first 10km and I finished it at 01:10:25. Like I told a friend in my defence I could have had a better time but the organisers decided to give us a steep hill from Mars!!

The Marathon began and ended at the beautiful Union Buildings in Pretoria.

A Lot has been said of how sports brings us together and for a very long time to me it was just a quote like any other, It didn't really hit home until I experienced the depth behind the statement. So I went to the marathon alone, I even woke up early because I was so excited I just wanted to run run run....... 

As the race began I paced myself  like how I would normally run my 5km, as the race progressed I found myself running behind and infront of a lot of people till we got to about 2 km or so I saw the gentleman in the picture above he was running behind me and i thought i was blocking his way so made space and told him he can pass me, he responded by saying he was pacing himself using me so i thought cool the more reason to keep this pace and so on we went with a 3rd guy but he later deserted us because just after 6 km we both felt our knees giving up and he still had energy, so on he went. I was too tired but I couldn't stop as I was leading and didn't want to slow him down but nature gave in and I stumbled and walked a bit so did he and we got a chance to talk about the race and motivate each other to keep going. We rested for a while and in as much as we were both tired and felt like walking the whole way we both agreed we were gonna go for it and so we did. We crossed the finish line together and I just felt a need to ask him for a picture so I can remember it and he obliged as you can see above.