THE RUNNING MANN
C o l u m n
If you consume too much “ Fast Fibre ” at the Herotel table , a soft landing spot awaits you at the bottom of the hill
I didn ’ t spot any elephants , but I did find some lions , and also a couple of unicorns that escaped from the forest
impressive pile of elephant poo early on , “ was scared the whole race !” Torr did finish as the second lady that day , so maybe she had Spence to thank for this . Sadly , though , this tradition seems to have fallen away .
This does mean that there is quite a long wait in the forest before the start , but complimentary tea and coffee is provided by one of the local church youth groups , which makes that bearable . There was also plenty of time to pay a couple of visits to ‘ toilet town ’ – a special section of the start venue crammed full of portaloos , for those that want to avoid ‘ knype in a bos ’ during the race . ( Whilst frank and open discussion about bowel movements may be the elephant in the room for normal society , my definition of a real runner has always been the ability to talk openly about one ’ s bowel movements without embarrassment .)
On that note , past organisers of the race used to have a lot of fun playing around with elephant poo . They would import a good supply of elephant droppings from the Addo Elephant Park and strategically place these ‘ bran muffins ’ on the route , to make runners think the elusive Knysna elephants were nearby . Cheryl Torr , who ran the inaugural race , recalled that Malcolm Spence ( the original race organiser ) told her after the race that he ’ d been to Addo to collect said elephant dung and placed it on the route , but during the race she was not aware of this , and after seeing an
Interesting Origins
This year , the race was about three weeks earlier than usual , as the Western Cape school holidays were early for some reason , and the organisers also decided to change the marathon to coincide with the start rather than the finish of the Oyster Festival . This meant that it was still dark when we started . On that , the race has always been linked to the Oyster Festival , and that is part of one of the more interesting origin stories . Very few people know that the colour ‘ orange ’ was named after the fruit and not the other way around . However , even fewer people know that Knysna Marathon Club was formed to host a marathon , rather than the traditional path of a group of runners getting together to form a club and subsequently organising a marathon . Let me explain …
During a council meeting in 1983 , the Knysna municipal councillors were discussing ideas to increase tourism during the quiet winter months . One bright spark suggested a ‘ winter festival ’ with a marathon being the cornerstone sporting drawcard . This idea was approved and eventually evolved into the hugely popular Knysna Oyster Festival we know today . However , the councillors had a problem . They might have been old and wise , but they were also very ‘ well fed ,’ and none of them knew anything about running . They had , however , caught wind that there was a bloke living on Leisure Island who was ‘ quite a good runner in his day ’.
It turned out that our Leisure Island runner was none other than Malcolm Spence , winner of the bronze medal in the 400 metres at the Olympic Games in Rome in 1960 . He was approached by the councillors , and one of the other race founders , Kenny Wilkinson , recalls , “ He wasn ’ t interested in road running at all . However , he accepted the challenge , and quickly roped in a few friends and helpers to assist in organising a marathon .”
Images : Stuart Mann
The marathon field gets ready to go
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