Brad Brown

I’ve been meaning to write this race report all week but things have been pretty hectic so here goes. Last Sunday the 28^th of November I did my second triathlon, the Tshwane African Cup at the Pretoria West Power Station. If I had seen this picture before I entered I don’t think I would have.

Where we swam at the Pretoria West Power Station

I’m sure there are better venues to have a triathlon in Pretoria. The water wasn’t the cleanest I’ve swum in to be dead honest I’m worried I might have a pair of boobs growing out my back in a few years from now.

As far as the race goes, I wasn’t planning on Read more…

I never mentioned it to anyone, except my wife, but the story just got a whole lot funnier so I thought I would share.

I just got back from the Kruger Park on the weekend after a 10 day holiday with the family. I managed to get a couple of runs in while I was there (in the camp of course – you couldn’t pay me enough to run in the park on my own). As always I used my Garmin 310XT on my training sessions to monitor my session. After what was supposed to be my second last run in the bush I hit the showers. We were camping so the ablutions were obviously communal.

The day we were scheduled to head home I wanted to go for one last run. I couldn’t find my 310 though. It was absolutely nowhere to be found. We literally packed everything up and didn’t come across it. I then retraced my steps to when I last used it and remembered the shower. I could clearly remember taking it off in the shower, putting it on the window ledge and thinking to myself “do not leave it there when you’re done”. I obviously had. I was sick to my stomach. I went back and it was gone. I asked the cleaners if they had seen it and they all said they hadn’t. I sent my son up to reception to see if anyone had handed it in. Once again to no avail. I was feeling more and more down. I love my 310 and I couldn’t imagine training without the damn thing.

As we were about to leave the camp site after packing everything up a gentleman arrived on a golf cart. In his hand was my 310. I nearly kissed him. Really. It actually crossed my mind because I was so happy. He was from housekeeping and said that one of his guys had found it in the shower and handed it in. I was so relieved having had it returned.

Its a great story of honesty and integrity triumphing over evil. It would have been so easy for whoever found it to try and sell it off and make a little bit of extra cash.

The saga continued today though when I dumped all the info onto Garmin Connect from my recent travels. I have been away on and off for the last month and haven’t had time to dump the data. I was looking at some of the training I had done on my travels. The run along the promenade in Cape Town with my best mate James. The workouts I did in Nelspruit and Witbank. Going through the data from my trip to Kruger I noticed a workout of over 3 hours. I found that strange as I am still nursing my itb and I only ran while I was in the Kruger. But I definitely didn’t run for more than 3 hours. So I opened up the workout for a closer look. Turns out who ever found it decided to try it out before they handed it in to housekeeping.

Below is the workout as I found it on Garmin Connect

Bailey Schneider and I were talking about the Garmin range of sports GPS units on the afternoon drive today. As part of the entry process for the Momentum 94.7 Cycle Challenge Highveld Stereo are giving away 20 Garmin Transitions packs, but only if you enter before 1 August 2010. You can enter by visiting the Cycle Challenge website. In that pack is the Garmin Edge 500 cycling GPS unit. I don’t train with that particular unit, I use the Garmin Forerunner 310XT which I absolutely love, but the functionality of the two units are very similar. If you love gadgets you will love training with a Garmin. Below are the details of the ride I did on Sunday afternoon. Take a few minutes and analyse the data to see what nifty little gadget it is: (by clicking on the view details button at the bottom)

Another long one in the bag. It wasn’t pretty but I was reminded yesterday on twitter some days you’re the kicker and some days you’re the ass. A marathon is tough even if you have a great run. I’ve only done three but I learnt the most out of this weekends Wally Hayward marathon. I had a serious lesson in vasbyt.

The race was a two lapper and according to the nedbank 2010 race guide its one of the easiest marathons you can hope to run. I think they must have been talking about a different race to the one I ran on Saturday.

The blister that I picked up at the Loskop Marathon 2 weeks earlier had kept me off Read more…

My preparation for the 2010 Loskop Marathon was not ideal. A constantly niggly left foot after the Vaal Marathon 6 weeks earlier never allowed me to do the sort of mileage in the build up that I would have liked to have done. I also decided to change the shoes I was running literally one week before the race. This in hindsight probably wasn’t the wisest decision either. In the week prior to the race with the new shoes my tendonitis cleared up so I decided to risk running the 50kms in the new shoes.

We decided not to sleep over in either Middelburg or at the Loskop Dam the night before as I was on air until 7pm on the Friday evening. We woke up at 2am and were on the road to Middelburg by 2:30am. An early start to what was going to be a long day.

The Start of the 2010 Loskop Marathon

By the time we reached the start I was a bundle of nerves. As it started to get light the 4000 runners began the trek to the loskop dam. Earlier on in the week I had spoken to my good mate Dave Walters from MPower FM in Nelspruit and it turned out MPower FM was the media partner for the race. We were going to try and do a couple of live crossings from the road and the first one was as the gun went.

My goal was to go out until halfway at just under 7 minutes per kilometre until halfway and then take the rest of the race as it comes. It all went according to plan. About 5 km in I got swallowed up by Vlam’s sub 6 hour bus and decided to stick with them for as long as I could. I actually finished the Vaal Marathon in the bus and that’s how I qualified for Comrades 2010. That’s why it wasn’t vital that I finished under 6 hours in this one but the goal was to spend as much time as I could on the road to get a decent long one in the legs.
Read more…

I was so looking forward to the Spar Lantern 10km night race last night. It was rated as one of the best 10km races in the country last year. I wanted to take part as I had heard that it was well organised and the atmosphere was amazing with the entire route lit up by lanterns. After last nights race I have no idea why it was rated so highly.

I think why it was so bad last night was mostly because of Read more…

Berg en Dal 15km Night Race Route

The only downside of the route was Read more…

December has been one silly month! I am actually glad it is over to tell you the honest truth. I’ve been pretty slack updating you on the progress of my training but at least I haven’t been slack on the training. I seem to be recovering pretty well from my foot injury (although it has been playing up a bit the last couple of days again). I’ve managed to get a few 10km runs in the last two weeks which has been good preparation I think for the Read more…

It has been a pretty productive week as far as my training has gone. I am still battling with the tendonitis in my left foot but as the week has progressed my foot has improved. I’m still going for physio every day with Derrick Carter and he seems to be working some serious magic. I was able to run 4 times this week; Monday I did about Read more…

The weather this week played havoc with my raining plans. With two weeks to go to the Roy Brown memorial half marathon I really wanted to run the 15km night race last Wednesday in Benoni just to see how I would cope with a slightly longer distance. I was really nervous the first half of the week leading into it, but Wednesday morning arrived and the weather was shocking. I decided not to risk getting sick by running in the cold and wet conditions. That left me with a huge dilemma as Read more…