I never quit — I don’t know how

Comrades Marathon winner Camille Herron, left, was nearly lost to athletics because of basketball, but running became her first love. It shone through last Sunday that she had a score to settle

BASKETBALL’S loss was clearly the Comrades Marathon’s gain when it came to Camille Herron. How she chose such a difficult, lonely and unappetising sport in the eyes of Americans ahead of the popular hoop sport is anyone’s guess.

However, being the athlete that Herron is, that kind of challenge is easily surmountable. After all, she made chicken feed of the notorious Comrades Marathon up-run last Sunday.

It’s not often the race leader puts the hammer down in Pinetown from where her opponents have no response, but that’s what Herron did.

“I did grow up as a basketball player. My dad and my grandfather were basketball players for Oklahoma State. I’m built like them, very tall and muscular and from the time I was a little girl, I used to push myself to the point of exhaustion and blacking out.

“When I got into running and I figured that I was a better runner. It was a natural fit for me because it seems I was born to run and I was born to run long distances. At times I wanted to break down and there were people who were carrying me in the race and when you’re winning a race and you want to win,” Herron said.

“I grew up wanting to be like my father, who was a globetrotter, and that mentality that I developed from pushing myself to the extreme like my dad is ingrained in me and has pushed me to become a successful runner. I was athletic growing up but athletics has come naturally to me. But for those who watched me on TV and thought I was going to give up, that wasn’t the case. I don’t give up.”

After bailing out with serious sickness in the 2014 down-run, when she was hospitalised with 2016 down-run champion Charne Bosman at her side, she had a date with destiny.

Her stars aligned in the best way possible for the Christmas Day kid from Norman, Oklahoma, whose introduction to the Comrades Marathon was through Tim Noakes’s book Lore of Running in 1995 when she was in junior high school.

Ultra marathons were not an entirely new thing to Herron, who met her husband and trainer Connor through running.

But the Comrades was a bucket-list item she needed to attend to after her traumatic 2014 experience.

That race was won by British athlete Eleanor Greenwood and the manner in which she obliterated the Nurgalieva twins — Elena and Olesya — may also explain why Herron couldn’t finish.

It was one of the faster races that gave the down-run its famed notoriety as Caroline Wostmann found out to her chagrin two years later in her attempt to annex the double.

Herron had broken down in the post-race briefing about her 2014 sickness but the joy of being the first American since Ann Trason to win the Comrades washed over her.

“Charne and I were in the emergency room three years ago and I was very sick. I actually passed out. I remember waking up and telling the nurse that I was dying.

“I literally hit the point where I thought that I was dying.

“It took me a really long time to recover but I knew I just couldn't give up. I had to come back and redeem myself and fight with everything that I had,” Herron said.

“They said I had a virus and I just lost a lot of fluid. My potassium had dropped and when it drops, your body shuts down, your heart stops beating and your muscles can’t contract.

“Maybe it was just low potassium with all the fluids that I lost. I probably had concussion because I fell and hit the tar. I pretty much lost my memory.”

I grew up wanting to be like my father, who was a globetrotter, and that mentality of pushing myself like my dad to the extreme is ingrained in me