Learning lessons

After a very pleasant ride on Sunday morning with the ever-impressive Club100 in Sandton, Jess and I decided to pop out for a run – a gentle 10k to get some fresh air and keep the running mileage ticking along.

Now, when we first moved to South Africa we were horrified by the local practice of exercising unfeasibly early in the morning. Running clubs seem to meet at 6am, gyms open at 4am (and are busy by 5am), club bike rides start at 6am, and can be earlier on weekdays. Here we were, in a land with wonderful sunny weather, and the locals seemed obsessed with getting up at unhealthy times of the morning to avoid that sunny pleasantness.

Anyhow – during our ‘settling-in’ period (ie, when we didn’t do much in the way of exercising – despite joining a phenomenal gym we didn’t actually regularly visit it for the first 4 months or so), this South African practice wasn’t a big deal. We weren’t doing much, so it didn’t really matter at what time we weren’t doing it.

Now that we’re getting into our training regimes a little more seriously again, it seems there are some important lessons to be learned. First (as per a previous post), there are lessons from a cycling perspective to be learned about other road-users, and their unreliable road etiquette.

Second, there remains some merit in the phrase ‘mad dogs and englishmen etc etc’. On Sunday, after a pitifully slow and very uncomfortable 4k of our planned 10k, we ground to a panting halt on our way up a hill. Having set off at 11:30am, we were now in the unrelenting heat of the day, and drawing a lot of concerned looks from anyone on the road. Our pace was only one notch up from a shuffle, both had bright red faces, and the sun seemed to be taking delight in beating down harder every time we rounded a corner into a street with no shade.

We walked the rest of the way home and had an ice bath to try and recover.

So – it seems the locals are onto something. Early morning exercise in South Africa, no matter how unpalatable, does seem infinitely more successful. We went for the same run again this morning, and cruised round very merrily. For this weekend’s 20k we’re going to be setting off nice and early…