Oh look, another ultra marathon…why not? I mean its only four weeks since the last one. So as every Comrades trainee knows you need to run two ultras in April, and as every runner knows it takes your body 6 weeks to recover from the damage of running a standard marathon – so how much for an ultra? I’m already broken from four solid months of training, it really can’t hurt any more than it does already.

Four Hills for Lindsay is not really a race, its a long training run around the Peninsula. There is no starting gun (you start more or less at 6am), no finish line, no race clock and no medals. You pay your 50 bucks, show up and then run for a very long time. The whole thing is arranged by Fish Hoek AC and the water tables are manned by volunteers who keep leapfrogging around the course, there is nobody to sweep up, so you can’t run through the water stations. Everybody stops, has a chat and throws their sachets in a black bin liner. Best of all there was food, I’d never eaten and run at the same time, and it was easy, don’t know what I was fussing about. After five hours on the road, a simple thing like a pink marshmallow or a salted potato takes on epic culinary proportions and is quite frankly fabulous.

Running notes
Route: Start at Fish Hoek AC, to Kommetjie, up to Misty Cliffs, Scarborough, Red Hill, down to Simonstown, left to Glen Cairn, up Black Hill to Sun Valley, up Sir Lowry’s Pass, right on a dirt road through Clovelly golf course, back down onto the main road and through Fish Hoek town centre, right at the roundabout and back to Fish Hoek AC.
Height climbed: ?m
Time started: 06:05
Total time: 6:23
Total distance: 56km
Temperature: 20˚ Cloudy and cool
Runner’s condition: Fine