GVI Cape Town Half Marathon

I’ve been working in my Regional Coordinator role for GVI in South Africa for just over 15 months and my time here is now coming to a close.

During this period I have become very attached to the Cape Town Community Projects and the fantastic work that all involved are undertaking. Whilst I wasn’t here from the very beginning, I have seen them develop and grow extensively during my time. What with around 400 volunteers having joined the projects since I arrived, I have had the privilege to meet many generous, kind-hearted and wonderful people. For the vast majority, to have been able to volunteer in South Africa is no mean feat. For many they have had to give up a significant amount of their time and money to be able to travel half way across the world to help children they have no connection with. I have always found the efforts of these volunteers to be very inspiring.

Drawing on this, I could often be heard saying that before I leave South Africa I wanted to do a fundraising event to make my own contribution to all the children. And so last Saturday I did. I ran a half marathon to raise money for the Cape Town Community Projects.

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Now, not being aware of my current level of fitness, how are you the reader going to be able to gauge exactly how difficult a challenge this really was for me? Well to help you with this, I must first point out that I have done little to no running in the last 4 years. Whilst I think I could walk or hike almost indefinitely, running is a different activity. When I first started training for this half marathon, 3km felt like my limit. Let alone 21km!

Conditioning my muscles and joints to handle the impact of running for that distance was crucial. So with only a 3 week period within which to train prior to the race, I had to undertake a fast and intensive training schedule to get myself up to standard. By the end, I had covered 70km in 17 days.

Back in 2007, I completed the London Marathon in a 36 degree heat, not having been able to complete my training, starting from near the back, in 4hrs 15mins. So whilst at first I wasn't too concerned about my time for this half marathon, in the back on my mind I always thought that I could, and should, be able to break that significant 2hrs barrier.

So on the day, running a pretty tough trail run that included a good number of hills, I was more than happy with a time of 1hr 56mins. In fact, that is an understatement - I was very happy with that!

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If you would like to donate towards this fundraising effort, you can do so via the following link:

http://www.justgiving.com/Jim-Bacon-GVI

And to see exactly where this money is going, do please visit the GVI Cape Town Community Blog:

http://gvisouthernafrica.blogspot.com/

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