Modern Athlete Magazine Issue 119, June 2019 | Page 24

THE RUNNING
MANN
By Stuart Mann
The Final Frontier
The Real Gijimas Ultra Marathon traverses 50 kilometres of rural Eastern Cape countryside through countless villages
between Zwelitsha and Mdantsane, but as the Running Mann found out, this is no easy run!
(Marathon #213 / Unique Marathon #122 / 31 March 2019)
E
very village needs an idiot, and at the Real Gijimas Ultra on the last weekend
of March, the following candidates applied for the vacant VIP (Village Idiot
Position) slots: Bulela Sidloyi, Ernest de la Querro, Jacques Coetzer, Jeremy
Knox, Nkul’leko Ntuli, Richard Birch, Stuart Mann and Zolani Twani. You see, for each
of the above applicants, this race would be their second 50km of the weekend, as all
of us had completed the Bruintjieshoogte Ultra Marathon the previous day.
My excuse was simple, and ecologically sound: I figured the best way to minimise
my carbon footprint was to do two ultras for the price of one airline ticket. I expect
that the other runners also had good justifications. Whilst we may never know why
the chicken crossed the road, each of the eight village idiot initiates had their own
special reasons for running back-to-back ultras.
Jeremy assured us that Gijimas was significantly easier than Bruintjieshoogte,
which was good news to us, since Bruintjies is a fairly tough race, with 717m of
climbing along the way. Jeremy told us that the Gijimas start was much higher than
the finish and that we would “love the easy, downhill route.” However, he lost some
credibility (and caused a great deal of consternation) when he declared that “there
is a hill like Pollies” towards the end. This definitely set some alarm bells ringing,
especially from whence this comparison came... Famously, Jeremy had to take a
long nap during his only excursion to date up Polly Shortts!
Jeremy is a primary school teacher as well as an accomplished club-level rugby
referee. Whilst the judgement of referees is always questionable, school teachers
should be beyond reproach, but Jeremy would lose all credibility over the course
of the next six hours. Gijimas has a whopping 889m of climbing and makes the
Valley of a Thousand Hills look like Harrison Flats! (Unluckily, Jeremy would be the
only one of us to not complete the double, as he experienced some issues with his
kidneys just after the halfway mark – his symptoms included shortness of breath,
fatigue, confusion, nausea and weakness – and he sensibly retired from the race.)
My logistics to get to the Gijimas start line
were a flight to Port Elizabeth, two-hour
drive to Somerset East, a 50km ‘stroll’ in the
Karoo heat to the top of Bruintjieshoogte and
back again, and finally a three-hour drive to
East London. Insanity loves company, and
I met up with Jeremy Knox and the rest of
the Born2Run lunatics division on Sunday
morning to get from Beacon Bay to the start.
Jeremy was the only person in the minibus
who’d run the inaugural Real Gijimas 50km
last year, so we deferred to his knowledge
and expert opinion of the route.
24
ISSUE 119 JUNE 2019 / www.modernathlete.co.za
Fake News?
I’ll grant that on paper this does looks like a fairly easy ultra. You start at an altitude
of 375m and finish at 275m, so this is essentially a down run. You do a steady
warm-up climb over the first 15km, to reach an altitude of 530m, drop all the way
to the 39km mark and then have 11km
Venter
Reunion of Lunatics