There is a story of pumping arms, thousands of pounding hearts and pouring sweat that needs to be told!

My very own One Ocean! The race that has consumed so much of my mental energy and a little of my blog space. I must confess the 21km is really the Once Ocean as one does not get to do both of them on the race. I have always understood that the Two Oceans is one of the more difficult runs out there and I certainly was not disappointed. I have great respect though for all those runners that manage the 56km as that is a long hard haul regardless of whether it happens along two oceans or not.

My first Two Oceans was awesome. I took my hard learnt lessons about smiling and complimenting myself to heart and told myself many, many lies that made me smile. Crowd support was incredible and as a runner, something really appreciated. It seems having these people cheering for me and calling me by name, as it was included on my race number, added an extra couple of springs in my step. I also found that by interacting with the crowd, they got all fired up and we were both able to feed off each other. I was not going to let all of these complete strangers down!

Strangely enough there were also very monosyllabic conversations with other runners that were absolutely awesome. I may have misinterpreted some of their grunts though.... I had a conversation at the end of the race with a runner that I had been following for some time. It was really great as I was tired and needed the mental diversion. If it was not for her, I would not have run the time that I did. In fact, the women runners were incredible and impressed me immensely. I was just trying to keep up with them!!

I tell you all of this as this was the best run of my life. Strange but true as I have not been able to train for it all. I managed to run the 21km in well under an hour and forty five minutes. I look forward to meeting one of my five year goals which is to run two 21km runs in less than a hundred minutes. Bring on the Knysna 21!

And now that you all know about this goal of mine, there is no way that I can let you all down!