Weekend Argus (Saturday Edition)
To run back
two buildings and let’s do it quickly so we don’t get hit by sniper fire. So there we were doing some intense sprints in 5kg flak jackets and helmets with Alex carrying about 5kgs of my camera gear as well.
“Unfortunately on one occasion the sniper was too accurate and we were too scared to run back. It turned out to be a good call because two sniper bullets hit the Humvee that pulled us out.”
Crawford managed to squeeze in one decent 16km run through ancient architecture when she and her crew pulled back to Erbil. Then it was back to the Mosul front line and more intensity work punctuated by stretches against armoured vehicles.
“Alex will play it down,” huffs and puffs McLuckie in a phone interview while completing the first 48km leg of the three-day Easter 100km in Gauteng, “but she needs very little training. She’s lucky if she does more than 20km a week but she still managed her first marathon in November when she finished the Soweto Marathon. And I’d have put money on her finishing the Oceans Ultra this year if there wasn’t a cutoff time. She’s got incredible mental strength. She is one of those annoying runners who can run a marathon with very little training.”
“I’m not really a runner,” said Crawford shortly after disembarking from a plane from Joburg where she lives with her family.
“But I got into it because of Garwen, who is a fanatic, and it’s a great way to keep fit while I’m on assignment. You can do it anywhere.”
Running is also a life saver. “When that fighter taps you on the shoulder and tells you to run, you’ve got to be able to sprint!”
Crawford admitted she prefers the finish line to the actual running itself. “The high of completing a race when you are well out of your comfort zone is quite something,” she said.
Celebrating her 55th birthday today, Crawford added that harder than running was raising money for #Run4Rights: Turning the Tide for Young Women.
“Out of my 100 000 Twitter followers I’ve had two donations! So I appeal for help to assist young disadvantaged women escape poverty on the Cape Flats.
“One of my fellow runners has managed to get out of poverty and when she went back to her Cape Flats family and friends this week and explained she was doing a charity run, her unemployed auntie gave her R20. If she can afford that then I’m sure half of my salaried Twitter followers can.”
Make a difference at http:// www. actionaid. org/ south-africa and click Turning the Tide for Young Women.