005: Comrades 2025 - From Newbie to Novice

It is Race Week: Comrades 2025, #isiko_mpilo, is upon us. For the last four years, this race has been a highlight of my year. The story doesn't begin with my first run in 2022, though.

This is the second of five essays that I'll be sharing this week about my relationship with The Ultimate Human Race. This essay covers the years 2010 to March 2022, wherein I focus on five races/events that taught me valuable lessons on the road to Pietermaritzburg.

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After starting my running journey on firm sandy beaches, I was brought back to earth trying to build fitness at Highveld altitude in the second half of 2010. My first few months were slow. Dad and I would run 3-4km loops of the neighbourhood before school and I would ache from the slightest increase in speed. Later on, I would learn that our cardiovascular systems adapt much faster to running than our skeletal systems can. They say that “pain is weakness leaving the body” and there was a lot of weakness to get out of the door.

Throughout my first year in university in 2011 I kept to a consistent habit of running 10-20km a week. I even lost 9kg during my first few months of university, when most people balloon upon their introduction to such venerable gentlemen as Messrs. Richelieu and Morgan. I would often run onto the University’s sport campus at night and during one of these runs I decided: I would run my first 10km in February 2012.

Race 1: Rookie Errors

 The chosen race was an easy flat course that meandered through old Pretoria East suburbs and the University of Pretoria Hatfield campus at the Bestmed Tuks road race. I ran it with my dad as my mentor and I was feeling fairly strong, right until we ran onto campus and I had my first onset of runner’s trots. You see, I’ve always been a nervous eater. When I was at school and still harbouring dreams of becoming an Accountant, I would binge eat a box of Romany Creams and down a litre of milk after each Accounting exam to recover from the stress of the ordeal. I carried that same nervous habit over to running and promptly overcompensated on the “carbo load” before my first race by wolfing down plates of food the night before. An unexpected, but inevitable pit stop cost me a full 4 minutes. I finished my first 10km race in 01:07:00 – and a fair bit lighter, too. Regardless, I was super proud of the achievement and wore my muscle pains with pride.

Lessons learned:

• Race nutrition does not mean overeating.

• Running is - in fact - a lot less stressful than any Accounting exam and I could retire the nervous feeding of Romany Creams.

Race 2: Stay humble

In another version of this story, the trajectory continues linearly from 10, to 21 to 42 to Comrades, but my next 10km race would only be three years later. Life happened quite hard in the intervening period. I also picked up a smoking habit (sorry, Ma) which made it much more difficult to pick up the lost fitness. The Lucky Strikes were cast aside when I struck it lucky by meeting the woman who would eventually become my wife. Towards the end of 2014, after painstakingly slow progress, I could finally feel the difference in my running starting to take shape. I ran my first sub-30 minute 5km and found that I had started to refer to myself as “a runner”.

The final aspect that drew me into the sport, was Strava. Strava is a tracking app that combines activity tracking with social media aspects like commenting and liking other people’s activities. For me, though, the data component is what sealed the deal. I could lay down routes like breadcrumbs and see it tally up over time, enabling data analysis and experimentation. It was a no-brainer. This was the sport for me.

Throughout 2015 I improved my 10km PB from 1:07 to 51 minutes and started to dream of my first 21km. In that year, I also experienced my first real running injury in the form of a runner’s knee. Strengthening exercises fixed the pain and I promptly entered the Deloitte Pretoria Marathon race in February 2016. I chose it specifically because of the scenic route up Fort Klapperkop and spent my last holiday as a student doing longer runs and runs with a lot more elevation than before. I was ready to go.

One problem arose, though. I had started working in Johannesburg in February 2016 and while I still stayed in Pretoria, I found it quite difficult to find a settled routine and lost a lot of my fitness in that month. It got so bad that I only ran twice in the month before my first 21. Nonetheless, I was proclaiming on the night before the race: “Based on my 10km PB time, I can go sub-2 hours.” I might even have said, “Easily…”  

Come race day, I set off like a bat out of hell (for my pacing abilities) and by the time we reached Klapperkop, I sensed that I had burned the candle at both ends. I tried to ignore the stabbing pains in my calves and as I winced and shuffled through the scenic grounds of Pretoria Boys High School with laboured breathing. As we exited the school and turned a corner at the 17km mark, my heart rate skyrocketed and it felt as if both my Achilles tendons had imploded into tiny balls of fire, taking the calves and hamstrings with them. I had to sit down. I legit thought that I was about to die on a street in leafy Brooklyn.

What I thought was a heart problem, was in fact a massive “bonk” as I barely ate anything during the race. I shakily struggled onto my feet, waved away the attentions of a concerned parademic, tried to run a few more times, but ended up hobbling and shuffling home in a time of 2:22. When the clock had struck my ill-fated predicted finish time of 2 hours, I gave Nadia - who was waiting at the finish line for me - a call and said, "I'm suffering and I'll probably be another 20 minutes." When she put down the phone, the PA system announced: "Our winner should be here in about 20 minutes." The winner that they were referring to had aced the full marathon in the time it took me to do a half. The sport that I had grown to love, had given me my first real disappointment.

In this photo, I might be looking all focused, but I am actually looking for the medical tent.

When I eventually found it, I described my symptoms to the physio, who responded by asking, “I hear you that you’re sore, but are you actually fit enough to run a half marathon?”  I felt humbled and embarrassed.  Later that day, my then-girlfriend (now wifey) took me to the Casualties ward at Groenkloof Hospital where I had a good dose of anti-inflammatories and muscle relaxants pumped into my system. Never again would I disrespect any race.

Lessons learned:

• Any race distance demands your respect. Especially if you plan to go further than you ever have before.

• Pacing, pacing, pacing. As Bruce Fordyce said, “Start like a coward and end like a hero.”

• Stay humble – you never know when your next bad race will be.

• Unless there’s a real emergency, don’t give up. I am still proud of this first half marathon finish, even though I hated the entire experience.

  
  

Race 3: Breaking 50 and back to 21

After this ordeal, I refocused on 10km races and tried my hardest to break 50 minutes. Try as I might, I only started to make progress once I started to incorporate strength training into my routine. At the Bestmed Tuks race of 2017, two years after breaking 1 hour for the first time and 5 years after my first 10km, I managed it and even found the time to beat my friend, Willem Potgieter, across the line with a dip that would’ve made many a sprinter proud.

Once I had broken 50 three times by mid-2017, I decided to try my hand at the 21 again. In choosing the Randburg Harriers Adrienne Hersch Half Marathon in September 2017, Willem and I made sure that we chose another difficult 21. After sensible pacing in the first half, lots of bananas and a fast finish, we had a  wonderful race and only missed out on a sub-2 by two minutes.

Safe to say that I was hooked on half marathons. I would run a whole bunch of them between 2017 and 2020 never being injured for more than two weeks. I even managed to improve my PB to 1:50 as the 2020’s rolled around.

By this time, more experienced runner friends had started to ask the question: “What about Comrades?”

In 2019, I noted to a friend who had just completed her second Comrades,

“Maybe 2022…”

She said, “No way, that’s way too far away.”

Lessons learned:

• Listen to your body. The signs that you are ready for a challenge will present themselves if you do.

• Slow and steady is always a good approach. By not being injured, I could make meaningful progress without doing crazy mileage.

• Running buddies make life a whole lot more bearable, especially when there's a sprint finish involved.

Race 4: Covid dreadmill

Little did we know what 2020 had in store for us. On the weekend that I was planning to run my first 32km race, South Africa went into a hard lockdown. Thankfully, I managed to convince my parents to lend me their treadmill. In that craziest of months, I clocked 200km in one month for the first time while staring at my garage door and looking at Bryan Habana highlight reels during long runs.

There was even time for some fun as I entered the Versus Socks Virtual Run. I pushed the treadmill to a 24 minute 5k, after which it couldn’t do anything under 5:00/km pace without violently cutting out the power and hurtling you against the front of the treadmill as if you were trying to tackle Habana in another highlights video.

Lessons learned:

• Running outside is the greatest blessing. Never take anything that this sport gives you for granted.

• The longest distance you’ll ever cover in a race, is the few inches between your ears. Running further than I ever had while staring into a wall, did me some real favours in the mental grit department.

  
  

  

Race 5: The Comrades Centenary Hope Challenge

From there, I ran my first sub-105 minute 21km and in 2021 I ran my first sub-45 minute 10km. I had achieved what I wanted at the short distances. It was time to look at going further. In the fashion of the typical South African runner – who had never even done a marathon at that stage – I was considering blowing right past the marathon mark and going straight for Comrades in 2021. As Covid reared its head in violent second and third waves Comrades was cancelled again. This meant that all the hopefuls had to be content with a Virtual run – The Comrades Centenary Hope Challenge. In preparation for this, I created my own challenge for 2021: to run 20 21s (half marathons). I would then give each Strava run in the challenge the title 01:21, 02:21 etc. until I reached 20:21, which I did on the last day of 2021.

The virtual Comrades run that I attended was a socially distanced 45km run hosted by the Midrand Striders through the undulating surrounds of Beaulieu. On that challenging route, I went from marathon novice to ultrarunner in one day. It started out spectacularly and I was feeling confident running with Comrades veterans, but by 36km I was in the pain cave again.

I had to walk all of the last hills, but, in contrast to my first 21km, I was completely stoked with the experience. After a slow finish and an ice cold Hansa Pilsener, I elatedly exclaimed, “Maybe next year we do the real thing.”

Lessons learned:

• Covid saved me from a really silly first Comrades attempt in 2021.

• When in doubt, train hills. And then when you don’t doubt, train some more hills. The hills in my first marathon absolutely wrecked me.

• The greater the distance, the greater the reward. Guaranteed.

It is Time

After completing the Comrades Hope Challenge in the first week of June, 2021 turned into a year of great challenges. There were immense work stresses and successes, with a promotion to a managerial position to keep me on my toes. We had to do many renovations to our old house, including ripping off and reinstalling an entire section of the roof in the middle of winter. And we had to process the deteriorating health and subsequent death of two grandparents. To decompress from a wild year, Nadia and I joined a group on the Waterkloof Hiking Trail in December and had all the year’s tribulations wash from us in three sopping wet days in the mountains.

The year’s drama culminated on the second night of the hike when a WhatsApp message snuck through the poor signal with the news that I had passed all the requirements to graduate from my Masters degree in Advanced Data Analytics, which I had been completing part-time over three years. Many peaks had been conquered, but rather than seeking a break from them, surrounded by mountains, I was feeling emboldened and ready to tackle the next peak – literally and metaphorically.

Comrades loomed large…and in 2019 I had said “Maybe in 2022…”

Going into 2022, with the Master’s behind me, I thought “How difficult can a Comrades be when you compare it to working full time, studying part time and renovating a house?”.

In March 2022, I ran my second marathon at the famous Johnson Crane Marathon in Benoni, qualified for Comrades by doing so and promptly entered the legendary race, without too clear a plan of how I was going to make race day on 28 August 2022. I did know, with utter conviction, that the lessons learned from 2010 to 2021 had set me up to make a success of it.

And it is, after all, in my blood.

The next essay in this series covers the build up to and day of Comrades 2022 – # Sishay’ibuya – The Return.