Seconding at Washie this weekend

I'm off to East London on Friday morning to second for a friend running Washie 100, a classic South African 100-miler road race. Yes, that's 160-kilometres on tar; and a busy road at that. It's on the road that connects Port Alfred with East London. It's the 38th running of this event.

I met my runner, Asa, at the Namib Desert Challenge last year. He's been living in Malawi and coincidentally grew up and went to school down the road from me.

Namib was his first staged race and although he's run Comrades a few times, he really got the taste for a lot of distance. After Namib he started trawling the web for events and settled on doing Washie. He asked me if I'd crew - and I readily agreed. And now, almost a year later, we're here. He's fresh off

We've got two other people with me on the crew. As the road is busy, we have to drive behind our runner for the whole race. I look forward to running with Asa in the wee hours of morning to give him a pick-me-up and to guide him over the last few kilometres to the finish (looks like the roads are tricky in town and he'll be tired). I need to wait for him to get a bit tired so I can keep up with him. hahahaha

Fortunately the weather forecast is looking reasonable. We're looking at 22°C / 11°C in Port Alfred on Friday and 18°C / 14°C in East London on Saturday (possibly with rain).

Winning time is little over 13hrs. Cut-off is 26hrs. The race starts at 17h00 on Friday evening from Port Alfred.

Gonna be a good weekend.