[Marathon #78 / 8 November 2008]
Anyone who has ever had the (mis)fortune of running with me for any period of time will know that my primary running goal has always been to run a sub-3 hour marathon on an unassisted course. With my biological clock ticking away – the baby is due on 1 January, which I understand will result in some drastic lifestyle changes – there was a certain sense of urgency in achieving this goal before the year was out.
Picking a fast marathon towards the end of the year is quite challenging, as most of the “easy courses” are packed into the first four months of the year to entice Two Oceans and Comrades participants to use them as seeding qualifiers. Although there are some great marathons in the second half of the year, there are very few that scream out “PB,” so I would really have preferred to find an unassisted, circular course, but it turned out that the only option was a point-to-point downhill flyer in the form of the Kaapsehoop Marathon.
