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Tuesday, May 26, 2009

The Comrades weekend

Well, this had been a very exiting weekend! My brother came all the way from Nieu-Zealand to run the Comrades Marathon (for those that is wondering, it's a 90km marathon held yearly in South Africa and it attracts people from all over the world). He was joined by my two sisters and my brother-in-law. They came on Friday and on Saturday we drove the route he was going to run to Durban. We also went to the marathon expo, which caters to all the needs of the runners. On Sunday, very early, my husband, sister and brother-in-law took my brother to the start while my other sister and I watched the TV on the couch (with mugs of tea, very nice! :)). We also got to see him on TV! A while later we all jumped into the car and started the long way down to Durban. Our first stop was in the middle of nowhere next to the highway. The picture was taken just as the 10 o clock 'bus' went past. Basically this is a group of people who will cross the finish line at the 10 hour mark.

We waited there for a while and managed to find him in the crowds (there were almost 13000 people running). We had three more stops along the road, these pics were taken at the last stop. The top one is my brother, sister and her husband, with only about 33km to go and the bottom one is at 20km.



After these we made our way to the stadium in Durban, and waited there for almost 3 hours before he came in with a time of 10 hours and 51 minutes. He was number 6583 of 12951 to finish. :) I am considering doing it in about 3 years, though I would really like to be pregnant at that stage. Will be deciding on that. This is a pic of the finish line:



Other news is that I live in a really stupid country... The temporary contract job I was supposed to be staring this week is now going to be a volunteering thing cause they can't pay me as my husband is also working there. Now I have to wait for three months so that I can apply for the position and actually recieve payment. Sheesh, it really sucks.

3 comments:

Julie said...

wow!! Runners impress me....Looks like a fun day with your family.

Tails said...

Hehe its so weird how you call it Nieu-Zealand :P I didnt even know that was the Afrikaans way of saying it :)

Congrats to your bro on finishing!! Thats something I could never do, so a huge congrats to him!!

About the job, thats really odd that they cant pay you because your husband works there! I've never heard of that before...are you sure its legal?? (congrats on getting the job though regardless!)

Daleen said...

Hehe, I'm so used to using the Afrikaans spelling, forgot about the English one! Basically, they were going to appoint me for the temporary contract position until they advertised the job, but now some people were complaining that the contract should also be advertised. It is really stupid, seeing as I am really qualified to do the work...