Sport	Off Road
Event	Bryton Cradle View
Date	21 April 2013
Where	Glenburn Lodge, South Africa
Distance	13 Km
Finishing Time	01:49:12
Race Number	877
Result	90/227
Top %	40%
Pace	8:24 m/km
Speed	7.14 km/h
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My experience at the event:

It has a been a while since I run a race. The last time it was in Italy, running under the snow. But with my saturday morning now booked with kickboxing, I can run races only on sundays, and it's a bit tricky to find anything closer. 

Luckily I decided to mix it up a little and not just participate in road races, so by using the trail running calendar, I found a race not too far from my area: the Bryton Cradle View run.
I liked the idea of starting from Glenburn Lodge, a place I know very well (I got married here in 2008 and I come back every year around that date with Lindsey).

It was a shame that an insane fog blocked the beautiful view of the surrounding mountains. Driving there was tricky, and when we started the race (with Andy, by bro-in-law, who has recently discovered the joy of running, and Kirsten, his wife, who was doing the short distance) it was difficult to see more than 20 meters ahead of us.

Of all the short-distance (less than 21km) races that I've done in my life, this was definitely one of the toughest. The climbs on a narrow trail path were hard (we climbed 350m within 1km!), and the descents, on a slippery surface after 2 days of raining, there were equally dangerous. The amount of people running it created some bottlenecks, but personally I was glad to be able to just walk instead of trying my luck climbing on unstable rocks.

It was, like in a proper trail race, almost impossible to get a good pace going, and only in the 2/3km stretch that connected the two mountains  we could finally increase our speed and relax our stride. 

We finished well below the 2hrs mark, and, thanks to some energy left in the final km, I even managed a solid sprint to pass few more people. Andy, who mostly run with me, finished maybe a minute behind.

Some pictures from the race:









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