Running in Johannesburg, South Africa: Sandton, Braamfontein Spruit Trail, Botanic Garden

I just landed this morning after 20 hours on a plane and 29 hours door to door. Plus 2 hours to wait for an available room as arrived at the hotel in the morning. A rather smooth trip overall except for the stealing of my new Garmin and old Canon camera from my suitcase. After flying more than 1.7 million miles, it was time something like that happened to me, still it's always a bad surprise and almost jeopardized my plans to explore Johannesburg on foot. What is disconcerting is that it seems so common particularly with South African Airlines according to this thread. You'd think that, after a few years of consistent occurrences and reporting, a few cameras would catch the thieves and address the issue. Speaking of camera, I passed by many gorgeous villas in Sandton, each with electrified fences and at least a handful of cameras. The cost of living in such a contrasted and divided country with extreme wealth on one side (houses, luxury cars) and extreme poverty on the other one (and I know I haven't seen much in the area I'm staying in).

Anyway, having gotten the usual warning of not exercising outside in this country, and Johannesburg in particular, I did some search on the Internet about running in Sandton. I didn't find much, just a few posts reassuring foreigners that Sandton is particularly safe in the early morning, and recommending to run in the nearby parks or the indoor track of the Radisson Hotel's Planet Platinum gym. This didn't seem very appealing for a long run so I de zoomed on the map and found a very interesting stretch of green area along a creek, on the West side. It seemed so obvious, I was disappointed when the Concierge of the hotel had no idea about what I was pointing him to on the map. His only reaction was that it must be very far. Indeed, 4 kilometers, phew! ;-)

So I decided to go after sending an email to Agnès with the Google trace of my targeted route (only to find out upon my return that I hadn't hit the send button before leaving, oops!). The sidewalks are quite uneven along the main arteries of Sandton and it's also dangerous to cross roads and streets in a country which drives on the other side of the road (I almost missed to cross one looking at the wrong side of the incoming traffic, with the wrong habit and reflex); as a result, I was glad to find the Braamfontein Spruit Trail. It's kind of the Parisian Coulée Verte (see 2007 and 2014 posts), or maybe a local PG&E trail since the trail isn't much about leveraging the nice creek as it seems to rather be to allow for the passage of a huge power line across the city.

But, when not looking up, it is really surprising to find such a natural creek running in the heart of the city.

There is no marking but the path is rather easy to find and follow. It was actually quite dusty in this early September, after a dry winter. Yes, it's still winter here for a few more weeks, yet the temperature was 86F this afternoon and quite dry (16% humidity)!

I saw dozens of mountain bikers but only a handful of runners.

After about 12 kilometers I reached the Emmarentia Dam:

The reservoir is surrounded by the Johannesburg Botanic Garden which was crowded today with locals enjoying early Spring conditions.

I did see a few local species, for instance these ducks which seem to wear a brown mask or sun glasses, and a sort of ibis.

And a few upside-down inhabited nests as I've seen in Senegal last year:

Great city escape for a long run if you are staying in Sandton. Note that the trail keeps going North for a few more kilometers. More to explore another time, I won't have this luxury with my busy work week here. A good excuse to start tapering anyway after another reasonable good training week (88 miles, including a good speed workout on Thursday with Bob) and before the upcoming US Nationals of 24-hour in Cleveland in 2 weeks, which I finally decided to go!

Train and work hard, taper easy, race and play hard, repeat!

The first weekend of September we celebrate Labor Day and it's an opportunity to have an extended 3-day weekend, an opportunity to... work more as I highlighted in my blog already (Labor Day 2013: what a laborious week!, 2012: Labor day: back to (running) work!, 2010: Labor day: how hard are you working on your running?, 2009: Labor(ious) Day weekend: 4 stories, 1 post). You see from the titles of these posts, as much as we were all meant and born to run, I do consider we need to put some work in our running, so we can enjoy more of it! I also think that the multiple uses of the word laborious reflects the potential fatigue from the first 8 months of the season and especially the tiring runs and races in the Summer heat.

As many of you know, I like racing for the opportunity to test and push my limits. Racing so much also provide great, that it hard, training opportunities, training intensity that you would not necessarily reach training alone or even in social and fun runs. Moreover, racing also provides great opportunities to have fun by meeting other participants, volunteers and crews, and discovering new places and trails. And an "excuse" to taper from time to time!

After last week's Tamalpa Headlands 50K, I ran 10K on Sunday but was still too sore on Monday. I ran all the other days of the week for a total of 42 miles. On Saturday, I went back to the track for another long tempo run. I wasn't sure how long for but, as it was late morning and quite hot (88F), I set a goal to run laps at or just under 1 minute and 45 seconds, all in lane 2. After the 72 laps of 2 weeks ago, I reached a new milestone with 80 laps this time! One more step toward a marathon and an ultra on the track... Well, quite a few steps actually as my Fitbit counted 25,950 steps for these 20.3 miles (I was curious about how longer a lap is in lane 2 and, of course, the Internet has the answer! See: Track Training - Differences in Lane Lengths). I was very pleased with the regularity of my laps, I only ran 6 laps slightly above 1:45 for 3 bottle-change stops and 3 changes of direction (every 5 miles). Average lap time: 1:44, spot on!

On Sunday, I wanted to have a more precise goal to log a few miles and I chose to run from home to the Palo Alto airport. I had been months since I did this run and I thought it was going to be a short ultra (28 miles or so) but forgot it was closer to 33 miles, thankfully with a few water stops on the course. It's about 5.8 miles from home to the start of the Stevens Creek trail in Sunnyvale, then 6 miles to Shoreline Lake. By Bixby park in Palo Alto, my GPS shows 15.4 miles, a place with restrooms and water fountain which I sometimes use as a turn around for 50K goals. I did stop for a while to cool down, I really needed it! Then I went on around the Palo Alto airport and golf, stopping again for a few minutes at the Baylands Sports center. There was a breeze but, for some reasons, I couldn't bear with the 90F temperature and blazing sun at noon. I ran back to Shoreline, along 101 and made another stop at the Lakeside café which was super crowded. Got a Coke and some ice and, still under 7:25 min/mile, went back on the Stevens Creek Trail toward Sunnyvale and Cupertino, seeing less bikes than 2 hours earlier in the morning. I covered the 33 miles in 4 hours and 4 minutes, not counting the handful of long stops I made to drink and cool off. Our Summer is definitely not over, glad there is still water at these drinking fountains, phew! Can't wait for a rainy Fall and Winter now...

Another 12-mile run this Monday, and in 90F+ temperatures at mid day. I would have run a few more miles but I was pressed by... work. Yes, on Labor Day... Overall, not an extravagant ultra training weekend, "just" 108 miles for the week, and flat ones, but at a better/faster pace nevertheless.

As for playing, I did enjoy following quite a few fellow runners at the grueling UTMB (Ultra Trail du Mont Blanc). Francois d'Haene won with a magisterial new course record of 20 hours and 11 minutes, improving Killian Jornet's record (20:36 in 2011) and Xavier Thevenard (20:34 in 2013)! To put things in perspective, Anton Krupicka finished in 26 hours and Michael Wardian finished 10 hours after Francois, yet he placed 123 overall, out of more than 2,000 starters. On the women side, Rory Bosio of California won this year's edition again, twice in a row! After training quite a few times on the course, I need to get this beast on my program sooner than later.

Hope you had a relaxing Labor Day Weekend, yet didn't stay on the couch! Have a good and short week all, or a full one for those who are not reading from the US or Canada.