Harrismith isn’t known for a whole lot other than the one-stop. But, it is home to the oldest race in South Africa. A 15k mountain race up the Platberg [flat mountain]. Arguably, one of the toughest 15km races in the world. Today, on a whim, I entered.

My friend, Peirce, had planned on running it for along time. He was a collegiate cross-country runner and is training for a marathon [Disney in January, Boston in the spring...]. Last night I had the crazy idea that we should join him.

Shannon was already thinking about it, so she was in. And through persistent begging, we convinced Crys to join. 

Peirce finished in a little over 90 minutes and Shannon wasn’t too far behind. 

Oh, Crys and I “finished” between the two of them. But, that’s only because we disqualified ourselves and made a little detour. We skipped the mountain part of the race. Really, distance wise it didn’t cut much out of the race. I’m thinking 3k or so. I’m pretty sure we did about 12k.

But, honestly, although I didn’t complete the race, and technically I failed, I’m pretty proud of myself. I’ve never entered a race before. I’ve never been great at running, the most I’ve ever run is about 3 miles and that was a struggle. [Crys and I definitely didn't run the whole thing, but we kept a steady pace. Part of it was on level ground and then it went up rocky foothills to the base of the mountain]. 

Despite skipping part of the race, the feeling running across the finish line was pretty amazing. [oh, and hey, I got a t-shirt AND a metal...]. Here are some more photos…

oh, but, next year, I’m definitely entering AND finishing. 

Tags: Harrismith, platberg, running

This entry was posted on Saturday, October 4th, 2008 at 4:20 pm and is filed under just me. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.