Sunday, 3rd February 2008: 7 weeks to go.

There are not many Sundays left for long Two Oceans training runs, so on the coming Sunday we'll tackle the route from Constantia Village to the Silvermine dam, and back. The arrangements are as follows:

Meet at: Constantia (Alphen) Kwikspar, Constantia Village Shopping Complex
Start at: 6h00
Distance: 30 km
The route: From Constantia Village south to the Dennedal cycle track, through the Tokai suburb, along Tokai Road towards the Constantiaberg, up Zwaanswyk Road into the Tokai Forest Reserve, then up to and south along the contour road which leads to the western part of the Silvermine Nature Reserve, and then to the dam. From there we'll backtrack for about 5 km to the fifth contour, then gradually descend along the Tokai Plantation's contours to the top of the vineyards overlooking Porter Estate and Constantia Uitsig, through the vineyards and back to where we started.

This route has just about everything: it has tough uphills and non too gentle downhills which will work the quads, gravel track - uneven in parts - which will give the stability muscles a good workout, beautiful views, and great running in congenial company through forests, plantations and vineyards. We've run it for the last two years, and although people have felt very tired afterwards, the general consensus, perhaps because of the varied terrain, was that it did not leave the legs feeling trashed.

With only seven weeks to Two Oceans we have four possible high mileage weekend runs left. On two of these weekends most of us will run the Peninsula marathon (17^th of February) and the Tygerberg 30 km (2^nd of March). On the Sunday before Peninsula, moreover, one will probably not want to do a really long run. This leaves just Sunday the 24^th of February for such a run.

You have a choice for the 24^th of February:

a) we could do the 38 km so-called Nek-to-Nek run (from Hout Bay to Constantia Nek, over Ou Kaapseweg and back to Hout Bay, or

b) we could do a run from Simon's Town to Smitswinkel Bay, over Red Hill directly back to Simon's Town (29 km), or extend it a bit by going back to Simon's Town via the Dido Valley road (31 km) or Da Gama Park/Glencairn (35 km).

Please let me know what your preferences are.

Gerry