The Road to Comrades:

What would motivate a normally sane and rational person to want to run further than most people would drive on their annual leave? Well I’m not sure, but I decided to compete in this year’s Comrades Marathon in 1999, except I didn’t realize it at the time. I’ve loved running since I was at school and despite many breaks over the years, always gravitated back to it eventually. The opportunity for members of the public to run over the same course which was to be used for the 2000 Sydney Olympic Marathon proved to be too great a temptation and so at age 45, I decided to step up from the couple of half marathons I’d run by entering the Host City Marathon.

Several marathons later and I ran the additional 7.8 km’s to turn the Canberra Marathon into my first Ultra and that event proved to be the first in a series of coincidences which set me on the road to Comrades, when I ended up running most of the event with a lovely lady who would later encourage me to run my first trail race, the 36 km Mt. Wilson to Bilpin Bush Bash. The “Willy to Billy”, as it is affectionately known, was where I discovered a flyer for Mari-Mar’s Travelling Fit travel agency, in the goodies bag we received after the race and that’s where I first learned of Comrades. I’ll never forget thinking that you’d have to be some sort of psychopath to want to run that far, but alas, the seed was sown!

Other events followed as stepping stones, but the final nail in the coffin was when myself and a group of fellow Hawkesbury Triathlon Club members assisted as marshals at last year’s Weet-Bix Kids Tryathlon at Penrith Lakes. We were positioned around the run course and at the tail of the field was a young, physically handicapped lady who was shuffling along and determined to finish the event on her own. I was so taken with her gutsy effort that all doubts about whether I’d tackle Comrades dissolved and I commented to her, “Darlin, you are a true champion in every sense of the word and if ever I’m out running and think I can’t go on, I’ll remember your efforts today and be inspired by them.”

The Event:

The Comrades Marathon is a 90 km Ultra held each June on the “Youth Day” public holiday. Run between the towns of Durban and Pietermaritzburg in South Africa’s KwaZulu Natal province, the run direction alternates each year and 2004 was known as an “Up Run” as it started at Durban on the coast and finished at Alexandra Park, Pietermaritzburg, some 600 metres above sea level. The highest point on the run is 810 metres at Umlaas Road and whether the run direction is “up” or “down” this event commands great respect if you are to avoid being consumed by it.

To qualify, you must submit your best [verifiable] race time for a marathon distance or greater which you will run in the months preceding the event and that time will determine where you are seeded at the start of the race.

Training for this event needs to commence six months before race day and you’ll need to include a lot of hill work. The Comrades website is one of the best I’ve encountered for any event and contains a wealth of information, including a very comprehensive training programme which is posted monthly [from each November] by Don Oliver, the official Comrades coach who has compiled programmes specifically for this event for many years now. It’s graded into three different levels to cater for the finish time you want to achieve, but if you follow Don’s programme, you’ll realize your goal.

Also on that web page is information about the race history, nutrition, FAQ’s and a great chat forum where you can either link up with entrants from around the globe, ask questions of the coach, or get statistical information about any aspect of the race and it’s history. Top marks go also to the race admin staff who politely and efficiently answered countless questions which I fired at them in the months preceding the event.

Included in the entry fee is a coach tour of the race route for all novice entrants and this is an invaluable way of determining a race strategy , as you get a chance to see where all the hills, declines and flat sections are. The tour guides are all Comrades veterans and provide some invaluable insights as to what to expect on race day. For me, one of the highlights of the tour was a visit to the Ethembeni Training School for Physically Handicapped Children at Kloof.

With all the real issues those beautiful children have to deal with, they were more interested in making us feel welcome than in their own problems and burst into several songs to show us just that. All they wanted from you was a high five when you ran past them on race day while they were lined up along the road in front of their school. Someone decided to whip around the hat and within minutes we’d gathered several hundred dollars which we presented to one of the staff. Her gratitude and explanation that what we considered to be a modest amount would provide for, say, the services of a speech therapist for 12 months certainly hammered home just how lucky we are and how trivial most of our problems really are by comparison. It was a wonderful, humbling experience.

After Ethembeni, it was off to lunch at the oval at Pietermaritzburg so we could see where we’d finish, then back to Durban to the Comrades Expo for registration. The Expo is enormous and a wonderful opportunity to not only purchase race merchandise and ancillary goods, but also to meet and personally thank Comrades staff who had been so helpful with your enquiries over the internet.

Race Day:

Three AM and my early morning reminder call comes through, but I’d been tossing for some time and was quite relieved to be up and slipping into the race gear that I’d tried on fifty times the night before to ensure all was in readiness. After meeting my fellow Aussie competitor, Richard, in the foyer, we set off into the street lights toward the start line. We dropped our kit bags off at the truck, checked out the Porta-Loo’s early before the inevitable queues formed and had a look around the start line before wishing each other good luck and heading to our seeding areas.

At last I’m finally here and all the months of preparation are about to be put to the test. The start line is awash with the brilliant illuminations of several million candles, but four seeding batches back and amber-orange street lights cast contrasting shadows over the beautiful stone masonry which adorns the facade of the old Durban Town Hall to my left. Steadily and quietly the numbers swell around me until I’m surrounded by 12,000 like-minded others. There’s lightweight conversation here and there, but now is the time for pensive thought....mental preparation. “Chariots of Fire” emanates from huge banks of speakers to permeate the calm, pre-dawn stillness and fire the imagination, before fading slowly in anticipation of the traditional “Cock’s Crow” and as a prelude to the starting gun.

5:30 and “Bang!” I’m pacing up and down in the one place for what seems an eternity until several thousand in front of me make sufficient way for my batch to motion tentatively forward. It takes me two and a half minutes to actually cross the start line and it will be almost four more until the back markers make it to that point. The real challenge now is to avoid the discarded plastic garbage bags which served as pseudo overcoats against the morning chill and the thousands of drink bottles laying scattered on the ground. Tripping over in the middle of the testosterone-charge would not be a good look, particularly in front of tens of thousands of cheering spectators who line the streets as we exit the city proper– Wow, where did they all come from?!

It’s several kilometres until you find sufficient clear space to get into your stride, and even then you’re not comfortable. “Take it easy...long way to go” you repeat unconvincingly over and over to yourself as what seems like the majority of the field sweep past you. “Remember the race plan......”

The first 55 km’s of an “Up” run is almost incessant hills, the first of which you hit on the motorway not far outside of Durban. At that point I’d warmed up enough to ditch the track suit top I was wearing. I bought it at an op shop near home for $3 and with a zippered front, it was easy to remove on the run. Friends had told me that people along the way loved to gather up discarded articles of clothing, so before the race I wrote inside it, “G’day South Africa from Australia!” and included my name and race number along with, “C’mon Aussie!” below that. I couldn’t quite see the look on the face of the lady who picked it up, but I’m sure she’d have got a laugh out of seeing it!

The crowd support at Comrades can only be described as enormous. People in the suburbs peg off sections of the footpath in front of their homes a day or so before the race to lay claim to an area where they can set up tables, lounge suites, deck chairs and sufficient Esky’s and BBQ’s to do any Aussie proud. The smell of bacon and eggs just on sunrise is to die for and people will offer you anything you’re game to ask for, beer and champers included, if they think it will help get you to the finish line. Sandwiches, savouries, meaty thingo’s with names I can’t pronounce: take your pick!

Every car with a half decent audio system is nosed in to the kerb with all doors flung open to allow for the escape of the maximum quantity of decibels of motivational music, just so you don’t get bored along the way. Mind you, with literally hundreds of thousands of spectators lining a large percentage of the race route, there’s no chance of that and it’s marvellous how quickly time passes with all those wonderful distractions taking your focus away from the kilometres!

The aid stations [51 in total] are the best of any run in which I’ve competed. The sheer volume of goods required to stock them is amazing, not to mention the 4000+ volunteers required to man them. Water is offered in 150ml sachets [there’s 1,040,000 of them consumed on the day] and they are so much better than cups whose contents slop out all over you and create a real trip hazard when discarded in their thousands. The sachets are kept in butcher’s tubs full of ice water and can be used for drinking, cooling your forehead and giving yourself a refreshing squirt when the heat starts to belt back up off the tar around mid-afternoon. Sports drinks are also served up in these sachets.

All competitors wear a timing chip on their runners which emanates a unique signal. Through the Comrades website, you can key in a competitor’s number on race day and watch their progress updated for time and placing, as they pass over several electronic mats placed along the course. This is great for those overseas who couldn’t come along to watch you compete.

On the earlier visit to Ethembeni, I noticed a girl in a wheelchair which was specially modified with a shelf in front to support her legs and at one stage she gave me the most enormous smile, to which I reciprocated with one similar and a wink. Nearing the school on race day, I was hoping to see her again, as I’d carried a $1 Aussie coin with me which had Charles Kingsford-Smith on the back. Luckily, she was in the first group of children, so I pulled over briefly and asked, “Do you remember me?” She nodded as I dug out the coin, which I gave to her, explaining that it was a “lucky coin from Australia, just for her.” I didn’t have time to fully explain that Charles Kingsford-Smith was a famous Aussie aviator after whom Sydney Airport was named, but hopefully one day that little gal might get a lucky break and she too would be able to spread her wings and soar, just like Smithy. I’ll track down some contact particulars for the school and write to explain. Might even be able to do a bit of fund raising too......

Of all the hills on this run, the worst are known as “The Big Five” and with good reason. Our guide on the novice bus tour inadvertently set me a challenge when he commented that “we’d all be walking the last couple of them”, so I set myself the goal of running the whole way and trying to finish somewhere between 10 and 10 ½ hours. A big ask for a novice my age, but you have to have a go. Overall cut-off is 12 hours and there are cut-offs along the way. By day’s end, some 2,000 competitors had either “bailed” or were forced to retire when they hadn’t reached a cut-off within the prescribed time

The most difficult part of the run for me was the last hour or so when my quads felt like I’d been doing leg extensions in the gym with low weights, high rep’s with very slow movements – a dull, constant and intense burn, particularly on the downhill sections when trying to put the brakes on. For the first time in the race, I had to shut everything out and focus on nothing but my stride and breathing to override the pain. That last tree-lined kilometre down the finish chute to the line was the sweetest I have ever run and no amount of words can truly convey the full depth of what you experience upon achieving a goal which you not that long before had thought impossible.

Crossing the line in 9H:47 I’d managed to run the whole way and improve my position at 1 ¾ hours into the race from 6406th to 3784th overall at the finish. Six months and 1400 km’s of intense training in conjunction with five years of progressive development had culminated in the achievement of a lifetime and an experience I will never forget. In the catching area behind the finish line, all I wanted to do was simply stand there and soak up the atmosphere of the moment while reflecting upon the enormity of what I had accomplished.

If certain moments live forever, that one certainly will – a salt-encrusted, aching wreck, overcome with emotion....too buggared to cry tears of joy....too excited to move, just standing there smiling, taking it all in - Wow!

Comrades is a challenge – no two ways about it, but it is a challenge with enormous rewards for those who go into it with the proper training and preparation, both mental and physical. Apart from a short cruise, this was my first real overseas trip and I cannot speak highly enough of the assistance which Mari-Mar provided in making this such a memorable event. As a runner who has herself competed in marathons around the world, she understands the sort of issues with which runners have to deal when competing overseas. You could not wish for more professional and personal service when considering races such as Comrades, or the many others on offer through Travelling Fit, which leads me to an interesting dilemma: What next? The Arctic Circle could be interesting – hmmm? Mari-Mar........!

Cheers, Chris.