{"id":1877,"date":"2016-03-27T00:15:03","date_gmt":"2016-03-26T22:15:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.greenman.co.za\/blog\/?p=1877"},"modified":"2016-03-27T00:17:09","modified_gmt":"2016-03-26T22:17:09","slug":"26000-runners-and-a-walker","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.greenman.co.za\/blog\/?p=1877","title":{"rendered":"26000 runners and a walker"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>While about 11 000 people decided to <a href=\"http:\/\/www.twooceansmarathon.org.za\">run 56km this morning<\/a>, and another 16 000  took it easy with the half-marathon, I decided it was perfect weather to cover a little less distance than that, and go for a walk on the mountains.<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/www.greenman.co.za\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/03\/800px-SilvermineNatureReserve_resized.jpg\" alt=\"Silvermine (pre-fire)\" \/><\/p>\n<p>27 000+ people were blocking the route I planned to go, so I ended up walking near <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Silvermine_Nature_Reserve\">Silvermine<\/a>. Walking is a great mood-enhancer if I&#8217;m in a bad mood, and what I most want to do if I&#8217;m feeling good, so there&#8217;s never a bad time to go. Like most of us, I don&#8217;t always end up doing what I want to and I haven&#8217;t done much recently, although the summer heat where all I&#8217;ve wanted to do was curl up under a cold shower didn&#8217;t help. But, the first autumn cold front made perfect weather.<\/p>\n<p>I took <a href=\"http:\/\/www.dorjegilfillan.com\">Dorje<\/a> sometime in 2014, and it was a wonderfully windy day, hanging on to the beacon in the maelstrom as the clouds poured by, occasionally revealing the sun, or the view below.<\/p>\n<p>But that pales compared to the wind today. For most of the route, the wind was moderate, but it picked up in the afternoon, and coming back I took a detour to the lookout point over Hout Bay. As I got closer, sand started blasting my face, and I had to cover my eyes. As I reached the lookout point, I could barely stay upright. The wind was thudding into me, a brief moment of calm, and then raging with all the fury it could muster. I tried using some rusty tai chi to stand rooted on a rock, but just couldn&#8217;t keep balanced. I love Cape Town&#8217;s wind, but this was too much even for me, and I&#8217;m sure the runners are happy it was much milder in the morning!<\/p>\n<p>Luckily the wind was blowing from the sea, otherwise I would probably be spending the night half way down the cliff face.<\/p>\n<p>Coming back down past Silvermine Dam, unsurprisingly deserted, the water was the wildest I&#8217;ve seen, the wind was blowing the water over the dam wall, and any swimmers would have risked being dashed by the waves against the wall.<\/p>\n<p>If I&#8217;m not too stiff after oiling my walking rust, I may just do it all again tomorrow!<\/p>\n<p><em><a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Silvermine_Nature_Reserve#\/media\/File:SilvermineNatureReserve.jpg\">Image from Wikipedia<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>While about 11 000 people decided to run 56km this morning, and another 16 000 took it easy with the half-marathon, I decided it was perfect weather to cover a little less distance than that, and go for a walk on the mountains. 27 000+ people were blocking the route I planned to go, so&hellip; <a class=\"more-link\" href=\"https:\/\/www.greenman.co.za\/blog\/?p=1877\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">26000 runners and a walker<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1877","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-water-personal","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.greenman.co.za\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1877","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.greenman.co.za\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.greenman.co.za\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.greenman.co.za\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.greenman.co.za\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1877"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/www.greenman.co.za\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1877\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1886,"href":"https:\/\/www.greenman.co.za\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1877\/revisions\/1886"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.greenman.co.za\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1877"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.greenman.co.za\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1877"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.greenman.co.za\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1877"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}