If I can do Comrades, then there is nothing that I cannot do ...
A MONTH from today I will be doing the dumbest thing I have ever imagined, and I will be doing it sober, which means I can’t use alcohol as an excuse for my stupidity.
A month from today I will run my maiden Comrades Marathon, an approximately 90.184km down-run from Pietermaritzburg to my hometown Durban.
A couple of years ago I thought people who ran this ultra-marathon were mad. Why put yourself and your body through that torture? The grimace they wear at the finish line after their limbs had taken a beating for a whole day told me why this was a dumb thing to do.
But in the last two years I have also lost my mind after being bitten by the running bug. I started running as a habit because I was ballooning out of control, thanks to a diet of fast foods and no training.
I do not have a gym membership cause I find those outlets claustrophobic and pretentious, having to mix with the selfie and video-taking crowd who want to show off to their cyber friends.
The solitude of the road was a safer bet. What started as a way to control my weight turned into a habit and a therapeutic exercise that helped me start my day with a clear mind. It was also cheaper than seeing a therapist, well except that running shoes don’t come cheap. But it did my body and my head a whole world of good. I started doing 10km, then pushed myself to do 21.10km before doing my
first marathon last year on May 1.
It kicked my ass and I kept telling myself: “No pain, no gain”. My limbs and muscles were sore. But the reward I felt for doing what I never thought I could do made the pain bearable. That’s when I started entertaining the idea of running the Comrades as the next step.
I ran my first ultra-marathon in this year’s Om Die Dam and I saw that I can finish the Comrades. But what was my biggest challenge was the 60km training run I ran in Midrand last month. It kicked my ass, literally and figuratively, due to the constant bathroom breaks I took. Those breaks took a lot out of me physically but my stubborn side pushed me to finish. I dragged my body until the end, just over eight hours later and I would have missed the 57.610km cut-off in Winston Park with the time I ran.
That experience was an eye-opener. It taught me about the importance of eating clean before the race and taking good care of oneself. My approach to running has been to improvise, seeing as I go because I am too cool to research and too stubborn to quit. But this is different, I am reading as much as I can so that I am mentally ready. I think that I am ready. The run in Midrand made me realise that. I wanted to quit but I pushed myself to finish.
If I can do Comrades, then there is nothing that I can’t do. My family doesn’t believe I will finish. I’m also running in honour of my late father who would have turned 49 years yesterday. We watched the marathon together when I was young and never thought I’d ever run in it. Now I have lost my mind and will part of those running. I know he’ll be watching.