In my 2023 running recap, I hinted at doing my first marathon. Our son had just been born, and I had no clue what was going to be possible, so I didn’t want to commit to anything just yet.

My first marathon

At the beginning of this year, I decided to enter the Sanlam Cape Town Marathon. At worst, I could always choose to not actually run it. The marathon was going to coincide with the end of 4 months of parental leave; training for it was the only goal I had other than parenting and spending time with our family.

The marathon was obviously the highlight of my running year. As soon as we came back from Europe in August, I started my marathon training—giving me about 10 weeks. My training for it was fairly minimal: three runs per week, and once per two weeks I did a run longer than 20k.

My last longer training run was a 33k, and given that I was able to pace myself well, and felt strong afterwards, I started hoping that my dream goal of finishing sub 4h was attainable.

On the race day itself, some of the notorious Cape Town winds showed up: 20+ km/h with gusts of over 50 km/h. Especially while going on the N2—yes, that’s right, the marathon lets you run on a national highway—this really threw me off my pace and cost me a lot of energy. I was able to continue the marathon at a good pace for a while after that, but the loss in energy caught up with me around 31k, when overcoming the last incline in Company’s Gardens.

The notorious “loop of death”—the last 6km where you see the faster runners exhausted on the other side, and the wind is hounding you—was too much for me and I had to slow down frequently to catch my breath.

And then, it was there: the finish line. I officially finished in 3:51:31, and I couldn’t be more proud of my first ever marathon. I vouched that I was done with long-distance running for a long time at the finish line. And two weeks later, I signed up for the Two Oceans half-marathon. I’ll definitely do a marathon again, maybe this time sub 3:45, but very likely not next year.

Record 5k and 10k

Another achievement I’m really proud of happened at the start of the year when I entered the Century City Express. As the first race of the year, and the first one after Luca was born, I wasn’t sure what to expect.

The beginning was quite crowded, so I sped up to get ahead of the dense pack. After 2k, I realised my pace had set me on track to beat my 5k and 10k PRs.

I was able to keep that target in front of me during the race, and—even though the last stretch was tough—beat my previous record: 22:09 (4:26/km) for the 5k and 46:22 (4:38/km) for the 10k. As someone who used to be glad to finish a 5k in less than 30 minutes, this is massive progress.

Other highlights

Throughout the year, I ran several half-marathon distances, of which two stood out. The Slave Route Challenge is probably the most touristy race around Cape Town: you pass by several heritage sites along the way. It also has one of the steepest hills in the city: an elevation of about 100m in less than 2k. But even with that challenge, I was able to run the race in 1:47:10.

The second half-marathon that stood out was the first time I did a properly long run in Belgium: I ran past many villages near the town where I spend my childhood, and it felt special doing that.

Next to that, I enjoyed taking Mila to Dikkebusvijver: the pond where my mom used to go running. While camping in France, my brother and I went for our first run together in the 37 years we’ve known each other.

What’s in store for next year? Other than the Two Oceans, I have no specific plans other than trying to increase my 5k pace a bit.