Modern Athlete Magazine Issue 114, January 2019 | Page 16

ROAD RUNNING
Today she is a petite, fit and healthy 51 kilograms, and a regular site
on the roads and trails, but not so very long ago Verushcke ‘Rushi’ Kolbe
looked very different, weighing in at 86kg, and it took some harsh words to get
her to change for the better. – BY SEAN FALCONER
B
ack in 2010, Veruschke was going about her
duties as a health inspector for the City of Cape
Town when she visited the home of a woman
who was making meals for a street vending food stall,
and she heard something she really didn’t like. “While I
was writing out a new licence, the woman said to me,
‘Inspector, jy lyk soos ‘n klein renostertjie!’ I finished
writing the licence and gave it to her, then went and
sat in my car and started crying. That was the first time
somebody had told me bluntly that I am fat,” she says. should try to lose some weight.’ Soon after that we
went on a family holiday to Port Elizabeth and we
took the kids swimming, but I just sat there watching,
because this rhinoceros wasn’t going into the water
in front of all those people! That was when I realised
that I was the one losing out due to my weight, so
when I came back, I told everybody I was going to do
so something about it. I actually have to thank that
woman for telling me I look like a rhino, because it
triggered me into doing something about my weight.”
“That evening I phoned my father to tell him what
had happened, and he said, ‘I don’t want to be funny,
but you are a bit big for your height and age, so you Around the same time, Rushi was told by her doctor
that she needed to lose weight if she wanted to cope
better with her severe asthma, because she was really
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ISSUE 114 JANUARY 2019 / www.modernathlete.co.za
struggling. “I couldn’t even walk a
few steps without breathing heavily,
and I couldn’t do stairs. I remember
once I was at the Zevenwacht Mall
and one of my children ran away from
me, but I couldn’t run after him because
I was so overweight and couldn’t breathe
properly. It was time for big changes.”
Getting Going
That prompted Rushi to start asking around and
googling for advice, and when she made contact with
a woman who had lost a lot of weight, she asked her
what she had done. “She told me she changed her
lifestyle, starting eating healthy and started training,
doing a run-walk of 20 to 40 minutes each day, so I
decided fine, that’s what I am going to do as well. I
was motivated by seeing other women out training on
the road. They were in their in 40s and 50s and looked
fit, and I wanted to look like them and be like them,
and be a good example for my children.”
It wasn’t long before she was signing up for her first
race, The Spar Women’s 10km, and she says it was a
long, hard struggle. “It took forever. I remember seeing
people like Auntie Annetjie Berntzen and Michelle
Cupido, and all the other running ladies that I have
Abrahams
From RHINO
to RUNNER