The race is organized by the Zwartberg Runners and held on the same weekend as the Prince Albert Olive Festival.

Saturday morning was cold.
I abandoned the “warmth” of my sleeping bag and tent, cracked the ice off my running kit and headed off into the dark. We had been told to meet at the Lazy Lizard coffee shop at 6:30 from where we would be trucked to the start. It was warm inside with coffee and biscuits for all. The 10km runners were taken off to their start point up in the Swartberg pass first while we waited in comfort for the truck to return.

 This is the 3rd year of the run and there was record field of 70 runners for the half and also 70 runners for the 10km. This is up 65% on last year, which may have been due to the fact that some runners had done Two Oceans last weekend and were enjoying this race on their way back to Midrand, Pretoria and Bloemfontein.

Before long we were loaded into a cattle truck and taken off to the start. The wind chill on the back of that thing rendered my legs numb. I only had a couple of minutes to practice moving and bending them before we were off, heading along a tar road for the first few kms, enjoying the early morning sun lighting up the Karoo veld.
We turned off at the sand road leading into the Swartberg pass and soon you find yourself in the valley of the pass with the folded rock formations towering above. It is a steady tough climb from there to the turn around point at the ‘11km to go’ marker. Here you are able to enjoy the magnificent setting, but are also quite jealous of those runners already on their way back down.
From the turn it was more or less downhill all the way to the finish, what a pleasure! I found the run down the pass quite tricky as it is very rocky and uneven and took quite a lot of concentration from a non-trail runner like me.

Before the bottom of the pass we were turned off to run through the Bushman’s Valley private nature reserve. Sand and stone underfoot and acacia trees all the way.
The organization of the race was great from the start to the finish. There was water and tiny little cups of coke every 3 kms, and with so few runners it would have been rude not take from each one, after all the trouble they had gone to!
I still had a bit of strength left in my legs for the final 3 kms which are on tar and was very happy to hold a good pace down to the finish in the Main Street of Prince Albert. The finish line was festive and they had a screen set up with images of the runners that had been taken during the race.
 It was a great run, and well worth braving the chill.

I got an email from the Zwartberg Runners this morning with a link to their web page
www.zwartberg.com/runners/index.html where you can see pictures of the route.