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It’ s getting closer to that time of the year for runners. Comrades is just around the corner, and entrants are tapering down on their training and gearing their minds for the big day on Sunday, 14 June. At 5.30am, approximately 22,000 runners will be lined up outside the Durban City Hall waiting for the rooster crow to signal the start of the gruelling 87km trek to Pietermaritzburg.

The names Wally Hayward, Jackie Mekler, and Alan Robb, among others, are synonymous with the Comrades, as is the club whose colours they ran in and more often than not crossed the line first- Germiston Callies Harriers.

Stewart Peacock and Alan Robb in the 1989 Comrades. Peacock finished 12 th and Robb 18 th.

Not only has this iconic club produced more multiple winners of the Comrades over the years than any other club( 4), and probably the most first places in the race( 19), but the Germiston club was also born in the same year as the Comrades, 1921.

A young Johnny Halberstadt, who began his running days with Germiston Callies.

Two years in the writing, GERMISTON CALLIES – 100 YEARS, Recollections and Legends, was belatedly written to commemorate the club’ s centenary and published in January this year. Callies is now in its 106th year of existence, making it one of the oldest running clubs in South Africa. Although mostly associated with road running, GCH also made its mark in track and field and continues to produce top young athletes in this format of the great sport, due to the dedication of its track and field coaches like Stephane Kotze.

The track & field section of the club has, over the years, certainly more than contributed to the list of 21 South African representatives( at last count) whose performances in the famous navy blue and white with the picket fence and thistle logo earned them the right to represent their country internationally.

Wally Haward crossing the finish line in his sixth Comrades in 1988 at the age of 79, setting a new age-group record of 9hrs 54mins15secs and beating half the field in the process.

Although its Comrades heydays are long gone – it ' s been 46 years since a Callies runner won the Comrades( Alan Robb, 1980) – like most other clubs of that era, Germiston Callies is today more of a running and social club. The joke,“ a drinking club with a running problem,” is often heard.

Corporate-sponsored running clubs, as opposed to amateur clubs, rule the road, and today’ s Comrades winner, or any other prestigious, big-money road race, such as Two Oceans, for example, will come from a professional athlete who is able to focus entirely on running.