South African Joggling Adventures
Joggling is truly an international sport. Here’s an amusing anecdote from our South African joggler Flurpy.
10 K Joggling Report
I did this 10k today in Grabouw, a small town near Cape Town, famous for it’s beef sausage (“boerewors”)
and apples. The sponsor of this race is one of the apple farms, so all runners got bags of apples when they finished the race.
They had this competition for school children in the 5k where the school with the most entrants winning a huge cash prize, so there were kids all over competing for this prize.
I joggled the 10k (in 58mins), and as we started 30mins before the 5k kiddie / fun run, I finished with a lot of kids, who were more impressed with my juggling the 10k in 58mins than the guy that finished first in the 10k in 29 mins.
After the race, this one kid came to me asking me to show him how to juggle. Not wanting to make too much of a scene, I moved out of sight of the race finishing crowd, and showed him the basics of juggling cascade 3 and a few tricks with 3 balls. (showing off)
These kids mostly do not even have the luxury of electricity at home.
Soon I had an audience of about 100 kids, all enthusiastic about juggling, and many promising that next year, they will joggle the race.
In the end, most kids juggled the free apples handed out by the sponsors, with one or two actually managing a 3-ball cascade for 3 throws in 15-20mins, which makes me very jealous (it took me ages).
A lot of damaged apples later (all juggled with the apples handed out by the sponsor), I ended up being some kind of running hero, which my PB of 46mins on a 10 k never managed to achieve.
After doing 100 plus races, never competitive and always in the bottom 50% of the pack, I have in some magical sense managed to re-motivate myself to run, and actually be competitive in some kind of sense.
JOGGLING RULES.
If you have a joggling story you’d like to share leave a comment below or send an email to
thejoggler (at) gmail (dot) com
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This Post Has 6 Comments
If you’re still in the Cape Town area, joggle the Chapman’s Peak Road in the Noordhoek area — it’s a beautiful run but a nasty hill. Just don’t run off the road (cliff):
http://www.gmap-pedometer.com/?r=1670640
Hi Bob.
Nice to see my anecdote on your page Perry.
Bob, I’m from Worcester, and the only chance I’ll get to joggle Chappies, is if I get in shape for the 2 Oceans next year 😉
(2 Oceans is a huge 56k ultramarathon ran in Cape Town, and Chapman’s Peak, which is part of the route, must be the most scenic route in Africa, with steep drops to sea 100m below.)
Bob, how did you plot your run on GoogleMaps?
I’ve got a garmin forerunner, and I’ve heard it is possible, but I cannot figure out how?
That is very cool – I have been watching your blog for a while from the Running Blog Zone, but never commented before. Today’s inspired me to comment for two reasons – the South African aspect and the kids aspect.
I was born in South Africa – Vrehyd Natal, and lived near Capetown for a little while. I am jealous of your run.
Second, that is just absolutely cool that you took the time to show those kids more about juggling. I am not a juggler, and couldn’t hope to ever be a joggler, I have enough trouble getting one foot in front of the other…. You made more than those kids day, or week, they will remember that for a long long time! And, some of them may even become jugglers because of that one unselfish act on your part.
Tim, thanks for kind words.
To be honest thought, I’m irritating my wife non-stop with my new found juggling obsession I crave all the attention I get, so I’ll juggle for whoever can apprectiate it.
I’ve not had the luck of having a child of my own, but should it happen, he will have a helluva head start with a dad that can teach him how to juggle.
On a fitness level, I never liked going to a gym, and ended up running road races, though not competively..
I’m 35 now, and with the jugglin of 8 months, I have better biceps and upper body now than I ever had, thanks to juggling and joggling.
Tim, I assume you’re a runner for posting on this forum.
You must at least give joggling a go. All you need to add to what you already do is to juggle. I’m living proof that anyone without any ballsense whatsoever can learn to juggle, and in less than a week.
Look at Perry’s old blogs about the advantages of juggling- it is good for the brain, stimulates the mathematicaly inclined and is good fun.
My best way of describing joggling to a runner is by saying “Imagine getting a runner’s high after less than 5 minutes on the road every time”.
You want to learn how to juggle, google “wildcat juggling” – he has very good tutorials.
Flurpy — I use gmap-pedometer.com. They wrote an API (is that the right term?) for Google maps. I have to plot the route manually. The Chapman’s Peak link shows the map overlay on the satellite photo.
If you want to see the pictures of the route I ran on Chapman’s Peak, they’re here:
http://bobruns.blogspot.com/2008/03/it-doesnt-get-much-better-than-this.html
I ran Chapman’s Peak a couple of weekends before 2 Oceans this year. There were a lot of folks running on the road — a lot more runners and bikers than cars.