Caroline’s long road to Two Oceans gold
Wostmann only began running to lose weight
CAROLINE Wostmann started jogging to lose her baby-weight in late 2008, a year after her first daughter was born.
She would run four times around the block, an 800m lap that included a short hill that thwarted her the first few times, forcing her to walk.
Back then Wostmann, who had quit all school sport in Grade 10, never dreamed she would win the Two Oceans marathon women’s crown less than seven years later.
Heck, she didn’t even know the Two Oceans existed.
“I wanted to lose weight and you know how everybody says: ‘if you want to lose weight, run, [and] so I ran. My sister was staying with us at the time and I took her along,” said 32-year-old Wostmann, an accounting lecturer at Wits University.
“There was one hill. Now I wouldn’t even call it a hill, but then I thought it was a mountain. My sister would run to the top and I would have to walk.
“I couldn’t understand why she could run up and I couldn’t — I actually thought there was something wrong with me.”
It took her a week before she could run that hill. After that, her goals snowballed until the Wostmann avalanche rolled around the Cape Peninsula last weekend, sweeping aside her more accomplished rivals.
The mother of two was the first woman home and the 46th person to cross the line.
In our interview at her Pretoria home this week, she and husband Haiko discussed how her decision to start running changed their lives.
“We were both pretty much couch potatoes and party animals,” said Haiko, who helps to get his wife out of bed at 4am each day with a cup of coffee.
This week, he was given the added task of being the manager and organising the sudden flood of media interview requests.
“I had an interview yesterday and forgot about a work meeting I had,” Wostmann said with a laugh. “I had to join the meeting via Skype.”
While working as a chartered accountant, she had found the days could be long, especially close to deadline. “I enjoyed the work, but it was just the hours.
“Now, even with all the running, I spend more time with my two daughters.”
The piano in the lounge is for seven-year-old Gabriella and Isabell, 4, looks set to follow suit.
Wostmann is a late bloomer; getting serious about studying only once she was at university.
Unlike her two sisters and a brother, who all got seven distinctions in Grade 12, she got three in what she calls the easy subjects — English, Afrikaans and art. She didn’t do accountancy at school.
Wostmann remembers being bitten by the running bug soon after conquering that hill.
Two months later, she was at a New Year’s eve party where she decided her resolution was to run the Comrades Marathon, the only big race she’d heard of.
“I’d probably had a little too much champagne,” she says with a laugh.
But the next day, she was on WORTHY CHAMPION: South African ultra-marathon runner Caroline Wostmann celebrates as she crosses the finish line of this year’s Old Mutual Two Oceans Marathon in a time of 3:41.18 in Cape Town the internet searching for running clubs in her area, and on January 2 she hooked up with a bunch going on a long run.
“I told my sister the long run was probably 5km. It turned out to be 20km. We were so sore afterwards,” she says.
Then the goal was completing the Comrades in 2009.
“People told me I should not do the Comrades so soon, that I should wait a year. But I thought, ‘no, I want to do it this year [2009] because I’ll be finished with running by then’.”
That first Comrades was agony. “I didn’t think I could finish. Haiko is the greatest spectator — he was stopping off at different points to cheer me on. I was crying, I told him I can’t do this anymore.
“He said ‘yes, you can, I’ll see you at the finish’. I hobbled the last 20km to the end. Even though I was in so much pain I didn’t think I wouldn’t do this again. I just thought I must train harder.”
Then she saw a fellow runner who had the Bill Rowan medal for finishing in under nine hours. “I had done 9hr 17min. I thought ‘it’s only 17 minutes. If only I hadn’t cried so much I could have done that’.”
Her next goal was a silver medal (7hr 30min) and then gold, which she achieved last year by finishing sixth.
“There are times I have imag- ined myself winning Comrades, passing my competition. Doing that in real life felt even better,” said Wostmann. “But I couldn’t have imagined it happening at Two Oceans.”
When she crossed the finish line last Saturday, one of her idols, Ethiopian legend Haile Gebrselassie, was on hand to congratulate her with a hug.
“I told him ‘you are a legend’, and he replied, ‘no, this is your day, you are the legend’.”