The 13th Two Oceans Half and 41st Ultra Marathon follow the next day.
A last minute decision to accompany a friend who’s running the Half, when I jumped on the website I found to my dismay that the Half was Full!
It was a momentary disappointment. My eyes lit on the 20km Train Run — introduced last year in response to this rapidly growing sport.
Four hundred places were due to open the following week.
With baited breath, five minutes before entries opened, I poised myself at my laptop.
So massive was the response as entries opened that it took over 30 attempts and two hours online to register.
Two Oceans later declared that the phenomenal eagerness to participate actually crashed their website!
With the worldwide boom in fitness training and vast numbers of sporting and adventure events around it, new options keep emerging.
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I’ve been delighted to discover that the kind of running I have been enjoying alone for years now has an official name and lots of events to enter.
I’ve always preferred running in the bush, vlei, hills, valleys, kopjes and undeveloped areas adjacent to my neighbourhood.
It’s how I became a runner, taking my dogs with me and making every run an adventure.
What I’ve found is that on our back doorsteps, we’re surrounded by natural beauty and wonder.
Since we have to make a living and can’t always get away to a national park or nature reserve, it’s good to know we can still be wildlife enthusiasts close to home!
I constantly find new places to explore of great scenic beauty, teeming with birds, in some cases even containing wild animals, and all, a stone’s throw from my suburb Greendale.
My dogs know the routine. They leap joyfully into the bakkie, we drive for five minutes, park on the edge of a vlei or bush and off we go on another adventure, returning a couple of hours later, reluctantly, because the light is fading.
I pretty much always find some new and interesting wonder of nature to talk about afterwards with characteristic enthusiasm.
It might be a colourful frog, an unusual bird, an interesting mushroom, a duiker, jackal, bushpig, or something else entirely.
Now, with the Trail Running boom, I can take my bush-running skills to events, as well.
My equally exuberant dogs love to swim in rivers and puddles and dams we pass and have the same propensity as me to climb every boulder and kopje we find.
Currently, I’m exploring the areas around Chikurubi, Lafarge Cement, Tafara-Mabvuku, Gletwyn and the edge of Chishawasha, more thoroughly.
The bird life is amazing. Recently with a bird enthusiast friend, we found a Striped Crake, a shy and rarely seen migrant bird.
The Amur Falcons (formerly called Eastern Red Footed Kestrels) are here as usual at this time of the year from faraway Siberia and China in their tens of thousands, to enjoy the warmth and feast on termites.
If you want to experience an ornithological phenomenon, you need to be on the outskirts of Mabvuku at sunset.
They soar in to roost in their regular annual haunts, very tall gum trees in this neighbourhood, the sky virtually turning black with these amazing social raptors, singing as they come.
Black headed and grey herons, marsh and spotted eagle owls, whydahs, bishop birds, long crested eagles, crowned and wattled plovers and so many more, are abundant in these areas, and I sometimes spot small game such as duiker, bush pig, caracal, civet, jackal, slender mongoose, genet, scrub hare, vervet monkeys and more.
Thus, is the joy of running is wrapped up with the enjoyment and appreciation of natural beauty, flora and fauna — a perfect combination!
