Steve’s Saturday Morning Run

Steve is and has been in training for the Two Ocean’s Marathon which is a 56K run.  He and Grant Schaefer will be running this race again this year.  It is the Saturday before Easter.  After the run last year he decided he needed more hill training this year.  We have the hills, so this is not a problem.   Wednesdays is usually the hill training run.  A few Saturdays ago they did a pretty long run up this hill.  Grant is now in the states and so Steve is training here by himself.  Saturday mornings are when they do the long run.  So . . . . . . . .

This past Saturday Steve got me up at 4:50 so that I could drop him off at the bottom of this hill for a 20 mile run or 32K.  The elevation where he started at is 2,864 feet above sea level.  The elevation at the top where he stopped is 5,426 feet above sea level.  This is about a 1/2 mile climb straight up in elevation.   He made it and is feeling good.  It was raining when I dropped him off, but the sun did come out.  He is not a lover of working outside in the sunshine.  They usually start running by 6 AM.  He wanted to be running by 5:30 to avoid as much sunshine as possible. 

In the Two Ocean’s Marathon there is a hill called Chapman's Peak.  Steve basically ran up four and a half of those on Saturday!!  The following graph shows you the run.

One morning a few weeks ago, Steve took these pictures of a full rainbow and the sunrise on his morning run.

Please pray for Grant and Steve as they train.  Grant is in the States for a month speaking in churches.  Pray he finds the time to train.  Pray for them as they train separately.  Running with a partner helps to motivate you when it is pouring down rain outside and you would rather just stay in bed.  It is the rainy season!  Pray for them the week before Easter as they are driving down this year.  I think it is a long five day drive to get there.  Pray for them the Saturday before Easter, the day of the race.  Pray for Steve as he flies back home the following week and then rides a bus up to Mbala.  Pray for me!!  I will be driving for the first time all the way home from Lusaka with a trailer.  I can do long drives, I just don’t like to.

It took them 6 hours and 8 minutes to run it last year.  The goal this year is to run it under 6 hours.

God bless,

Rita for the Schwarz gang.

Jack Knifed Truck

On our drive home from Lusaka after Thanksgiving, we came upon this accident.  We drove right up to it, but on the other side was maybe 10 to 20 trucks lined up waiting to get through.  Our horn is very sensitive and Steve was reaching to do something and accidently gave a very little toot.  They stopped what they were doing and let us through. 

This section of the road is getting fixed.  They had been dumping dump truck loads of dirt on the side.  Here is was all rolled flat.  It also had been raining.  Not sure at all what this driver did, but he obviously went off the road into thick mud.

They were hooking a rope to the blue semi to pull it out.  The tractor actually cut open the trailer.  So I’m thinking they had a mess once they got him out of the mud.