How to get into ‘the zone’

As previously mentioned, Saturday was the finale of the Winter Trail Series. It was held in a place called Kogelberg biosphere nature preserve, near Kleinmond. This is southeast of Gordon’s Bay where you may recall that I had lunch after the second race in the series a few weeks back.

I woke up at something like 6am to get to this race on time. I somehow misread the directions and wound up taking the scenic route on the way there but I had allocated enough time before the start that this was not a problem and boy was that a gorgeous drive!! Absolutely breathtaking, so from now on forget taking tourist friends down to Cape Point we are going to Kleinmond! There are even penguins along the way, according to the signs at least.

This may be my favourite course that we ran – there was a good mountain section, some good uphills, and although the track was rocky and it was hard to enjoy the views because I was so focused on trying not to sprain an ankle there were some areas where it evened out and you could get some good running room. There were mountain streams to drink from, and once we got off the mountain and were running through the more sandy part of the course it was tremendous fun because it was really very much single-track, and overgrown so you were basically running through the fynbos at a rapid pace! This rapid pace came back to bite me though, literally, as I wound up with blood and some huge welt on my right leg afterwards. Not even sure what happened but I presume I ran through some bush so fast that it cut me up a bit. Blood on trail.

So the most exciting part of this day for me was that I practiced what I learned at yoga the other night in terms of relaxing into the pain and I actually managed to put myself into ‘the zone.’ Once I learned this I was tremendously excited but the problem is it requires a good amount of concentration, which for me at least was not possible when jumping from side to side, up, down, and over rocks. But when we came to long straightaway sections through town and along this great long boardwalk by the ocean I was able to practice and boy is it cool! Nearly 31 years of being alive and all it took was one kundalini yoga session to learn how to go into the zone. Anyway then we hit the sand at about 13km into a 14.3km race … that is just cruel and unusual punishment! By the time I got to the last hill, I could barely feel my legs but felt good running up the hill and of course was able to kick it into another notch to sprint it into the end. Different muscles. Not that you can tell from the photo, because I was too busy at that point hamming it up for the camera! On a related note, my fast-twitch muscles are soon going to be getting some TLC (or should it be having fun with lactic acid … the track at Stellenbosch is calling, I can feel it!!). Feel it, it is time …

This race coincided with some gravity festival, which sounds pretty interesting; there was some river race going on that some guy who asked what was up with all the running told me about. But in any event at the end of this race you could buy both food and, more importantly, BEER. I don’t think a Black Label will ever taste so good again! Then they gave out free Red Bulls and I drank one and then my stomach hurt from the sugar. Ahh all sorts of things I should not be drinking, sigh …

I also managed to get sunburn because I forgot to put on the sunscreen that I specifically packed in the morning (!!). Probably because at 8am it was about 10 degrees, but had warmed up to 23 or some such by the time we finished. Winter.

The drive back was similarly stunning. I am still not sure whether I had more fun racing on the track or drag racing on the N2 between Somerset West and Cape Town! Boy that is a fun section to drive, and hey if everyone else is going 140km an hour … it is really best that I never learn to drive a motorcycle I think. Speaking of dangerous, I decided to take a photo of the Athlone cooling towers while driving by, which is more dangerous even than taking photos of the fog & mountains at 7am because there is more traffic on the road. Well, all’s well that ends well. Oh, I took the photos because they are being demolished soon.

That afternoon after cleaning myself up I went by a braai in Camps Bay for a half an hour or so. I really wanted to stay longer but I had to head to Obs to pick up friends then to Newlands for a rugby match – Western Province vs the Blue Bulls [of Pretoria]. This was interesting since the last rugby game I’d been to was the Springboks in a friendly vs. France. Provincial rugby is certainly not as fast or as skilled … but this game was really interesting to me because it was so highly defensive. Province was on what was basically the 1-yard line (what is that, like 1 meter or thereabouts …) just in front of us and the Bulls would not let them get in to score a try. In rugby, unlike football, you can keep passing the ball around to your heart’s content (as long as it’s not a forward pass), so being able to keep the ball out of the end zone (or whatever you call it in rugby) is quite an accomplishment. Highly impressive. Actually not a single try was scored the entire time – Province wound up winning 15-12 on kicks alone (it was 15-9 until near the very end, so a good game!). Our crew seemed thoroughly to enjoy the match, which was good! Following the match, suffice to say I didn’t last very long and wound up in bed with the lights off at 9:30.

Sunday I went back to yoga and this session was much more like I was expecting, and if I may say so some of the exercises were quite hectic, especially with my quads and hip flexors being a bit tired (although amazingly not sore … I thank the stretches I learned at CCF that I did after the race). Yeesh. This was interesting too as in this session I got to thinking and picked up on a lot of the emotion I was feeling back in March. Luckily I snapped out of that pretty quickly, and enjoyed a nice lunch (despite the sugar in the chai tea, I mean what’s up with that, really) with my co-worker at the Wellness Warehouse. These will be interesting times, these next few months.

After a quick laundry run I drove up to Kuils River (yep) to have coffee with one of my friends from Stellenbosch. He and I are doing some business consulting work with a manufacturing company in Kuils River, hence the meeting place. What was supposed to be one hour of coffee and quick planning for the next evening turned into two coffees, and then three beers at Spur (he ate dinner there but I decided to go home and cook instead …). Five and a half hours later, I headed home laughing at myself a bit for having had the thought of doing work that day. Should have known better.

How to wreak havoc on your central nervous system

OK, so I’m behind again and actually what I should be doing right now is reviewing a business plan. Or reviewing draft sections of a feasibility study. But, I am procrastinating. Putting it more kindly, I am taking a short mental break.

I am actually a little bit baffled as to where my time went last week. Quite a bit of it was taken up with working on internal incubator tools, procedures, and a scope of work document for the incubation work that is going on today with our internal enterprises, and associated meetings. We also began using a new tool to do project management and time tracking. As a result, we didn’t make too much progress either on the business plans or on defining my new role in the portfolio management company.

Tuesday was great fun at Cape CrossFit as we repeated a workout that was particularly troubling to one of the guys who trains at our gym. I am laughing now thinking of Dami who used to have to listen to the details of my workouts every morning on the way into work, and once said “Every day you tell me what you did and I think it can’t get any worse … but it does!” Anyway after the strength part of the workout the challenge was to carry two weight plates (for a total of 22kg in my case) for a total of 200m and every minute on the minute do 10 burpees. I think I had a similar experience because I certainly realized in retrospect that I could have been running much faster in the first round before I got a little bit tired! Still managed to finish in under 6 minutes which was key because I certainly did not want to do another 10 burpees at that point!

I was also quite pleased on this day to visit a chiropractor recommended by a friend. I had messed up my back some weeks back with overhead squats, and then I’m sure 30+km of trail running didn’t help matters. I am pretty sure I walked out of there a few cm higher than when I walked in! I also learned that my joints are apparently quite supple, which is why I can get knocked out of alignment quite easily. C’est la vie I guess.

On Wednesday I had a housewarming party. Due to exams (!) my Stellenbosch friends couldn’t come which was a shame but overall there was a good showing and the guacamole was a big hit. Even Alma who is Mexican said it was good (and said that she wasn’t just saying that either!). So in most parties people seem to congregate in the kitchen. At this party people congregated outside the kitchen on the balcony! I guess most kitchens don’t have a balcony with a spectacular view of the city at night.

There was a big soccer game on – Bafana Bafana vs. Ghana from Soccer City. I tried to watch the second half but wound up talking shop with one of my coworkers and the 45 minutes just sped past. South Africa won 1-0 in case you were wondering.

As the final of the Winter Trail Series was Saturday, I had planned to take Thursday or Friday as a rest day. Again, probably chose the wrong day because on Thursday I had agreed to go to kundalini yoga with a co-worker. Now this was apparently quite an unusual session as all we did was one pose … which we had to hold for 11 minutes aside. This was an interesting experience – earlier in the day we were talking about yoga and how you can’t just try and muscle your way through it or you will die. Instead, I guess the best way to describe it is to relax into the pain. And trust me, holding this pose for 11 minutes is painful – on the first side I got to about 8 minutes and had to shake out my arm. Second side I managed to hold for the entire time.

But it was quite interesting – standing in this one position and concentrating on looking at my thumb. After not too many minutes the world started to get all blurry and I was feeling lightheaded, almost like I was going to faint even though I felt strong. It was really an interesting feeling, somewhere between connecting with an alternate reality and wreaking havoc on my central nervous system.

In reality I was absolutely exhausted the next morning. I can usually do 20 box jumps without breaking a sweat but on that day … uh-uh. Absolutely insane how tired I was. Thank goodness that day was bench press and not something that requires coordination because this would have been the day I dropped the bar on my head!

WINTER Trail Series & Women’s Day

I also miss drive-thrus. Can’t believe after working at Exit41 for so long that I would miss a drive-thru but there you have it! Actually I saw I think the first one, on the way back from the race on Sunday – a KFC! But I certainly wasn’t going to stop there. But on the way to the race, I really could have used a drive-thru Dunkin Donuts or something, although considering that I wound up getting there about 10 minutes before the race started after a 500m jog from my car, perhaps it’s for the best that I skipped the coffee.

So when I woke up on Sunday at around 6am it was pouring rain. Pouring. So what did I do? Pulled the covers back over my head, laughed at myself for being such an idiot, and went back to sleep for an hour. When I got up, the rain had abated … a little bit.

The race was at Kaapzicht winery, in the Bottelery Hills (actually, quite close to where I taught when I was here last year). The race didn’t have quite as steep hills as the ones we had encountered but there was a LOT of consistent uphill climbing. Happily, my legs did not tire out 100m into the first hill, but they were definitely tired: this was the first time my legs tired out before I reached my VO2 max (aka before I got so out of breath that I couldn’t continue). Nonetheless, I still managed to pass a bunch of people on the hills.

I actually like running in the rain and today’s run was good fun. It was through the winelands, and the wine vines were all bare in the winter, and there was some crazy fog. At one point the fog cleared a bit and you could see down a hill to a pond and then what I think was east towards Stellenbosch but since I couldn’t see the mountains I was a bit disoriented. Anyway it was breathtakingly gorgeous, the little of it I saw when not looking down at my feet to avoid flying forward onto my teeth! A little later the trail went very off-road and we were running with the fynbos whipping at our legs, the rain whipping at our faces and hair, and it was all I could do to try and notice the wild blooming calla lillies while trying to avoid spraining an ankle or doing a face-plant! I actually nearly did eat it at one point, on a straight-away happily, and I skidded about 10 feet before regaining balance – felt like I was surfing on mud! But the downhills were very hard – VERY slippery.

On this course the short and long course overlapped for a good portion. I was running along with this group and then came to a dividing point and went on the long course way, only to hear the guy say on his walkie-talkie that the #3 female had just passed the marker. I was thinking at about this point that if I actually ran a short course I would probably finish in the top 5 or 10, because a) all the good competition is in the long course and b) I don’t do long distance very well! Although today’s result translates to sub-10-minute-mile times for nearly 8 miles in very taxing conditions and considering that I was moving very slowly on most of the downhills and couldn’t even run some hills due to mud imagine what I could do in a road race! The last race in the winter series is coming up next week and I am really going to miss it, although not so much the tiredness it creates … guess I need to find someone to go trail running with occasionally!

Anyway near the very end there was a puddle so big that it was unavoidable, so I guess this counts as a shiggy trail perhaps? Oh it was really cute after this point there were a bunch of kids who probably lived on the farm out in the middle of the road giving high-fives to all the runners on the short course who were coming back in at this point. I was happy for this because it gave me a TON of people to try and kick ahead of at the end of the race. I think I passed like 8 people in the last 500 meters! It’s just fun to have a target to shoot for, and I beat everyone in sight so I was happy with that.

One of the other girls from CCF had her camera on her and managed to get a good photo of my muddy, uhm, posterior. But at least I had a grin on my face … until I cooled down, and realized I had some blisters and didn’t want to run back to my car. So then I walked back and got sprayed with mud by every car passing by … it was a messy day, and it took me literally hours to warm up.

So I got home and saw that the video of our prowler adventures had hit Facebook. Like I really needed to be reminded of that humiliation, well, clearly I didn’t go hard enough since I not only walked but ran 24 hours later!

I think one of the hardest things to get used to here is shopping, simply because I don’t know where to go if I want something. Back in the States, if I want plant pots and soil I know to go to Home Depot or Lowe’s. Here, there is Builders Warehouse which is kind of the same thing. But I also wanted an immersion blender so I could make some soups, and I am sure I probably pay get the best price for it but bought it at the first place I found it. Well, this is something you learn over time I suppose. I also really wish things didn’t close so early on weekends (if they are open at all on Sundays). I mean, who has time to shop during the week anyway, really? Geez. I guess nothing’s perfect… you take the good with the bad, and there are so many things that I like about being here that the rest is certainly manageable.

Monday was National Women’s Day. This is one of the very interesting things about living in a different country – all the holidays are different! No Fourth of July, Memorial Day, or Labor Day, but we get Youth Day and National Women’s Day. I guess you don’t realize just how much you track progress throughout the year based on when holidays come and go, but changing that up is quite enjoyable.

The winter weather continued somewhat unabated … I woke up around 7am, saw that it was still raining, pulled the covers over my head and went back to sleep. But eventually I couldn’t sleep any longer, and besides the weather had cleared so I got up, enjoyed some tea on the balcony while checking the horses on Signal Hill (still not sure what the deal is with them, I need to walk over there one day) and got ready for my friend to come pick me up.

We had planned to go to Fairview farm just south of Paarl on this holiday for a couple of weeks but like idiots didn’t think to call in advance to book a table. Oops. So instead we started with wine and cheese tasting and I must say that this is quite the combination; beats the heck out of wine and olive oil. I just really enjoy cheese, little though I eat of it anymore, but I do have a housewarming party coming up and people need to be fed. You can justify almost any food purchase with a party.

Since we couldn’t eat there we proceeded over to Franschhoek (which I can finally spell!) for lunch. Actually the lunch was so huge that we both had a bit of a difficult time with the workout a couple of hours later, but c’est la vie. Boy I had a hard time with that snatch today; can’t really blame the food but something was off. My head wasn’t in the right place for some reason. Oh well, there’s always tomorrow! Anyway I had a fantastic time on the holiday and the weather even cooperated aside from a short bout of rain while we were wine tasting.

Picked the wrong day to rest...

So, considering how much these trail races have been kicking my ass (aka taxing my central nervous system) I thought it might be a good idea to take a rest day. Really I should have taken Monday off considering how beat I turned out to be when I showed up to work out. But last week on what should have been my rest day I couldn’t help myself from a hot yoga session (in my defense my shoulders were very tight prior to that), and so this week I promised myself I would take a complete rest day on Friday.

So I slept in which was quite nice, as was checking the horses that chill on Signal Hill in the morning. Is there any place as cool as Tamboerskloof? Of course I had to go out to the balcony anyway … the last few days I’d been risking my neck craning over three stories of pavement to turn the water on and off (there was a leak and I wanted to be a responsible citizen and conserve water when I was out or asleep). Well, hey, if it’s not a little bit dangerous it’s not South Africa.

Then the shower curtain collapsed in the bathroom (who cares, right?) but somehow this combined with large amounts of water everywhere managed to delay me to the point where I was nearly late for work! I did not want to be late since the woman in charge of CSI for SA Breweries was coming in to talk to us. And if there’s one thing I [used to] like, it’s beer. It’s just … well, when Amstel is a premium beer, there is a real problem. That and the carbs. What I wouldn’t do for a case of Harpoon IPA right about now. I’ve been listening a lot to the Jack Parow song I Miss so here’s a couple things I miss from the States (in no particular order, and I’m not including people in this list for obvious reasons):
• Good beer :-P
• Amazon.com
• Dunkin Donuts
• Decaf coffee & tea, in general
• Google Maps (the real stuff…being able to search for things like ABSA Cape Town would be a real boon, thank you very much)
• Google Maps on the iPhone
• Reliable mail order
• My cat Hector (and also Tiger, T2, and Ellie!)
• Stores that sell Mizunos … I am hoping my mail-order ones arrive in short order, reliable mail order notwithstanding….
• Oddly enough, Spanish!
• Banana flowers
• Properly-raised turkeys

I did manage to find rosewater and fish sauce, so things could be worse. And you can get whole warthog legs around here which would be great if I ate pig.

After the talk the morning started off with a laugh as I got some work done while our CEO announced my role change to a room full of people (according to him he told them I was “considering” this role change, but that’s not exactly what I heard from the people coming out of the meeting … who knew I was so popular anyway??). So much for 24 hours to consider it. Well, whatever, I made this decision on the spot a few nights ago in the parking lot talking to him and we both knew it. I don’t generally take a lot of time to decide things, like when I was 18 or whatever and decided to drop out of school to go work for Jeeves. But I think it is only just now sinking in what I have gotten myself into … most definitely the red pill. Off topic but as far as I’m concerned the Matrix is not a trilogy but a single movie.

So Friday was a heart “play day.” We spent part of the day in team-building activities, which consisted of trying to solve a murder mystery invented by our lovely and talented Christina. I am pleased to report that our team won the competition (of course since the prize was a plate of home-made brownies this doesn’t matter all that much to me since I don’t eat such things… maybe I will have a tiny taste!).

One of the interns from Norway who observed my business coaching session at Purple Heart the day before was full of praise. She told me that I was “glowing” when dealing with these girls, that the two seemed really to trust me, and that I was really good at explaining things (like how much money to keep for oneself vs investing back into the business, and the importance of keeping records of the two) without being condescending. I bring this up not to toot my own horn but because it’s interesting because you can never see yourself through other people’s eyes. Working with these two girls is definitely one of the highlights of my week and it’s nice to get some external validation that it’s working because sometimes it’s difficult to see the progress from week to week.

Friday evening I went to the opening event for Masizikhulise, which is a Shawco initiative (Shawco is sort of a community service organisation under the auspices of the University of Cape Town; all of its projects are student-run which is really great for a number of reasons). Masizikhulise is a training academy for grassroots would-be entrepreneurs; four of whom are now in the Purple Heart program, and two of whom are the girls that I do business coaching for. Little did I realise that agreeing to go to this event would involve me being singled out in front of the entire crowd.

On the way out I was very tired so I resisted the temptation of beers with the rugby team (this is what I get for parking near the sports center!). Plus, like I mentioned above …. The beer in this country is not so good. What is funny though? I didn’t realise that both Castle and Black Label were SAB brands. Despite Castle being the premium brand, Black Label sells more than Castle in SA. Makes sense to me … premium or not, it’s cheaper, has more taste, and higher ABV. That’s what we call a triple threat.

So back to the subject of this post, I woke up Saturday morning to discover the WOD which was in teams 400m walking lunge with every 3 steps you had to stop and do 3 thrusters. Even in teams this is one hell of a leg workout for someone planning on as 12.3km run the next day! If I had half a brain I would have rested another day or gone for a jog or something. Unfortunately, I don’t have half a brain so I went over to CCF. Oddly enough, there were really only two of us there (I don’t count one of our coaches who really had no choice but to be there).

So we were given a choice between doing that workout and pushing the prowler around the parking lot. We chose the latter and well, let me just say that was a humbling experience and we will leave it at that. My goodness, after like 4 rounds or so I couldn’t even do the 50cm wall jumps in between without risking injury … my legs just couldn’t take it and so I had to step up which was even hard enough! Somehow a 50cm concrete ledge is much more intimidating than a 40cm box! Sad, sad, sad …. Hahaha, well clearly I need to start doing some extra practice running hill sprints up the Carstens Street cul de sac. In any event, this was still not the smartest thing to do in anticipation of a difficult race the next day but, like I said, I clearly don’t have half a brain. If I did, well, I would have done some things differently.

I spent the next few hours shopping …. Stocking up on some grass-fed meat, nuts, veggies to supplement my bag for this week which was quite fruit-heavy, and some home goods that I needed. I broke down and bought myself a new Wusthof … there is only so long I could survive without a proper chef’s knife.

After that, you guessed it, I caught up on work and caught up with some friends. There is still much more work to be done but there is only so much that is humanly possible, especially when distracted by sunset over city bowl, friends on chat, and Pirates vs. Chiefs.

So Sunday has dawned overcast and pouring (well, it was pouring a few minutes ago and seems to have stopped for a bit). This should make the run interesting, now I like running in the rain quite a lot but even I have my limits, and also mud is hard to run through. Apparently the only part of me sore from yesterday’s prowler extravaganza is my hip flexors and that may just be from excessive foam rolling in anticipation of today. But that doesn’t mean my legs won’t be tired 100m into the first hill …

Progress

It’s been a pretty busy nearly two weeks at work. We took two of the enterprises we are incubating through a review with the incubation committee (INCO), and as a result in both cases we tweaked the social impact piece although the business models for both were solid (at least at this point until market research lets us refine them). It was very interesting to watch the mental gymnastics of our CEO on this one aspect of one project mirror mine, and he came to the same conclusion I had reached a few days before. Sometimes it seems like things are just that obvious.

So the market research and business planning processes are moving along. At the same time we are working on a set of proposed changes to the incubation process. This sort of thing is really fun for me – doing and applying is great, systematizing is even more fun. Maybe it’s because it’s easier – things are easier in theory than in practice sometimes!

Also in order to obtain what is best described as bridge funding for Purple Heart I was tasked with writing a brief summary letter describing what we proposed for the short run until more money could be freed up, and why. It was a bit nerve-wracking, to say the least, to write a document that would determine whether some friends would keep their jobs or not. I mean, talk about no pressure. At least my boss liked it, and apparently it worked. It’s strange this financial pressure is so much more visceral than anything I have encountered before; in America potentially not to be paid for a pay period can hurt but at least in my circles it wasn’t catastrophic. Here, especially with the wide income disparities, it can be.

My weeks were lightened up by some field work – a visit of a couple of hours to each of the Purple Heart locations, visits to a number of FoodTents locations in Gugulethu and a return visit to Johan the Afrikaans farmer in Philippi (that last visit caused me to have to dodge people, cows, police, and construction vehicles to get to CrossFit on time and that is why I usually go in the morning!).

The visit to Gugulethu (or Gugs as it’s called) was a lot of fun. For one thing, I really like my co-worker who took me around: he is always in such a good mood and it’s a bit infectious! Secondly, I met a township resident who is a perfect candidate for what we are trying to do with empowering local residents through the FoodTents. Of his own accord (he is unemployed) he volunteers at a creche and both maintains our FoodTent there and has added a much larger area of land under cultivation. But I was talking to him and I have better knowledge of farming than he does (I was telling him how to plant potatoes), and he knows that the land is not terribly fertile (it is all sand), but has no money for compost, or weeding tools, or even a shovel – he is working with a broken shovel because it is all he has. And he does all this in exchange for taking home a small amount of the food that he grows. So you take someone like this, give him opportunity and training and he can do something amazing for himself – and that, to me, is what this is all about.

But back to why I enjoyed visiting Gugs: last but not least, it was a gorgeous day and it was fun to drive around the township with the windows down: I am finding that there is a big difference between theory and practice when it comes to “safety.” In general, white people don’t go to the townships (other than Mzoli’s …) unless they have some reason to be there, and the people respect that. I have never felt anything other than welcomed when we are there and a lot of the Mamas who run various things (crèches, workshops, etc) just insist on hugging you and making you feel as welcome as possible. I mean, you don’t invite problems by wandering off main roads on foot or anything like that and of course anything can happen at any time and that constant awareness of what is going on around you is one of the things that makes South Africa very different from America. But it’s like the Cape Town traffic – both cars and pedestrians are constantly on their toes. Better that than the sleepwalking that goes on in America, as far as I’m concerned.

My role at work going forward may be changing a bit, for a couple of reasons, but the first step here is to define how we think the incubator should be related to the internal portfolio projects. Even getting to take the lead on the organisational design here is very exciting. This really does remind me of my Ask Jeeves days in a lot of ways: working on a lot, doing things I’ve never done before but being stretched in a comfortable manner. You never want to be working so far above your level of capacity that you can’t handle it, but rather to be always pushing the boundaries slightly, but safely, and I definitely have a safety net in our CEO who likes to oversee everything so I can be confident that when I produce something and he thinks it’s good, it probably is.

Anyway what else is going on … I learned quite a bit about the business of one of my Purple Heart girls. I am so impressed with her – she is a natural entrepreneur I would say! Her mother found this hair product when she was visiting the Eastern Cape or Durban or something that apparently does both coloring and conditioning at the same time and is far superior to the existing products available in the Western Cape. So she started buying cases of it and then reselling. Including shipping, her price per unit is R10 and she is selling for R30. We talked about how to talk to salons to find out what their needs are in order to expand the product range, about how she should keep track of her costs and revenues and explicitly decide how much profits to take and how much to re-invest (and what re-investment means in this case), the importance of not running out of stock, etc. I was pleased to see the girls be able to do most of their own P&L calculations by hand. Their growth in just the month or so I have been working with them has been dramatic. It’s exciting to see.

Had a couple of nice dinners: one with a woman from the gym who I think would be a great fit where I work …. Once we get funding and can afford to pay salaries that is! The next night I had dinner with a grad student from UNH who was in here last week here. It’s happened, I’ve gotten to the stage where I have to go to restaurants and make everything a special order. Sigh. Another CCF dinner at Beluga because one of our coaches is off for a month. That was fun. Love a lot of those people.

Around this time I became completely exhausted. I went to the opening event for the Hub Cape Town and it was all I could do to excuse myself afterwards, I was just beat! The next night at the braai I went to I left around 11pm to get to bed so I could sleep well. Yep, I got made fun of for that: “You’re glowing! The gym is your lover!” (actually that was probably the effects of the hot yoga I did on what was supposed to be my day off…). But I was taking it easy that night and the next because I didn’t want to die on the 14km run on Sunday.

I moved out of Perspectives and into my own place in Tamboerskloof last weekend. It’s nice to have my own place, and also to live in a place that’s not all plastic 24-hour-security. And don’t even get me started on those lifts in Perspectives. The low point of the last several weeks was the lift that always stopped one floor above the number you pressed. Insane. But the new place is great – I have gorgeous views of Table Mountain and Devil’s Peak from the kitchen, bedroom, and balcony, and of Lion’s Head from the rear balcony. Plus, I have a gas stove which somewhat hilariously to me is hooked up to a propane tank, which means I’m going to have to hassle refilling it at some point. All the more reason to get a braai so if I’m ever accidentally out of gas at least I can still cook!

Anyway Sunday! The run was at Paul Cluver estate in Grabouw, about an hour east of Cape Town. The fog on the drive out was crazy. This course was really very enjoyable, especially the crazy downhill section of it – leaping over and down things, over rivers, through the mud - so much fun! What was not so much fun is my tactical error. Since 14kms is long for me, I went out too slowly and got boxed in behind a bunch of slow people on this massive hill. This delayed me by at least 5 minutes I would guess, causing me to finish 35/80 or so in the open women category (a significantly worse result than 25/90 in my massively dehydrated state last week). C’est la vie, it was still fun.

The rest of the day was consumed with lunch in Gordon’s Bay by the water with a friend of mine from Stellenbosch, followed by a gorgeous drive to Muizenberg where I attempted to go surfing. The waves were really rough, which made it hard to do much of anything other than get some good exercise fighting the waves. I think it took like literally 7-10 minutes to get back to the point where you could attempt to ride the wave again, so when I was going on maybe my third or fourth attempt I got up on the board and was so confused that I jumped off because I couldn’t quite believe I was up there. Same thing happened this morning at the gym doing box jumps – I jumped up to maybe 90cms or so and was so surprised that I’d actually done it that instead of standing up straight I jumped right back down!

I was very tired Monday and Tuesday. I remember during Monday’s workout I was wondering what in the heck was wrong with me, because I usually perform much better. Then I realized oh yeah, my body must be tired, huh? But I felt better on Tuesday and much better on Wednesday thanks to 9 hours of sleep. I guess I finally found something that kicks my butt enough to kill the excessive energy I tend to have. Only two more weeks of this, though. Luckily for me this week’s course involves another steep hill at the end (hills are where I have a significant comparative advantage).

Monday night I went down to Hout Bay to have dinner with a couple that I met at the gym. Unfortunately Chapman’s Peak was too windy for a sundowner, but I did take a couple nice photos. Two bottles of wine and a lot of social entrepreneurship talk later, I headed back home. That dinner again made me realize what a small pond South Africa is, as a name of someone I’d been in contact with some months back came up in conversation as someone I should probably talk to, and I realized that actually yes, in my new capacity I should talk with this guy again. There are a couple more examples of situations like this where a friend meets a mutual friend or friend of a friend … incredibly small world. The cool thing is, though, that heart keeps coming up again and again in a positive light through these conversations. I really am in the right place.