Despite meticulous preparations for the half marathon, last Friday was chaotic. Knocking off at 1300 from school, I had prizes, food and drink to collect.
First stop was collecting the prizes. A number of local companies made very generous late donations. This included a voucher for 300 bricks (worth £300 apparently; not sure how many Godfather Robert could get for that) from Nyawo Stone. This became top prize for the men’s race. Tiger Lodge, a 4/5 star hotel stumped up an all inclusive weekend away. This became top prize for the winner of the women’s race. Lesser prizes included the previously mentioned red wheel barrow, and also a river cruise and picnic. All told, we now had a prize list fit to grace a 1980s British TV game show (Blind Date, Big Break, Blockbusters – you pick).
Laden with prizes I began my food stops. First, I collected 60 loaves of bread, 12kgs of chicken and 200 bottles of fruit juice. Then I picked up the water sachets. Except I couldn’t. Because they had been forgotten. By the supermarket delivery man. Somewhere in Durban. Time now was 1700.
Feeling an A-team moment, the half marathon committee met. Without any cigars, I set out the problem. How could we purify a lot of water very quickly and where could we find lots of small drinks bottles? Authentically (as the A-team), we had a quick solution. All we needed were several giant containers, sodium hypochlorite (bleach) and a water source. Using the hospital’s resident dietician we added the appropriate percentage of bleach to containers of water. We then decanted the contents of 100 of our juice drinks into yet more containers and refilled them with H2O. Job done. Once again, Colonel Decker had been thwarted.
The rest of Friday was spent sorting out logistics such as ensuring we had enough vehicles to transport the athletes to the start line on Saturday.
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