Modern Athlete Magazine Issue 120, July 2019 | Page 18

ROAD RUNNING
The men’s race saw the main contenders start to
throw their weight around from just before Drummond
at 43km, testing each other with mini surges to see
who could respond in kind. This is typical for the
men’s race, which usually has more depth than the
women’s field, which means that the leading men tend
to congregate early in the race and then punish each
other the rest of the way. Bongmusa won the Two Oceans Marathon, even
though this was not planned and he merely picked
off the runners ahead of him that had blown. Still, he
ended up running much harder than Edward, used the
approach of the Fordyce era coming in just under four
hours, finishing 101st in a conservative 3:53:26. That
said, Bongmusa has proven that he recovers quickly
– he won the Comrades in 2017 and then came within
a whisker of winning the 100km World Championships
just a few months later.
The real race started to unfold near Camperdown,
when Bongmusa and Edward were alone out front,
and they went at each other as if their lives depended
on it. Edward surged with 15km to go and opened
a 50m gap, but it didn’t take long for the defending
champion to respond, opening a 30m lead of his own.
This was all new territory for Edward, and it looked
like Bongmusa had broken his challenge, but he came
back at the champion and passed him just before
the start of Polly Shorts and proceeded to move 20
seconds clear by the top of Pollies. “Bongmusa and his coach know just how good he
is, and he knows how to pace himself. It still took a
monumental effort to dethrone Bong’s at Comrades,
in spite of his win at Two Oceans, because Bong’s
still ran a PB by a long way. So that makes Edward’s
effort all the more impressive,” says Lindsey, and he
reckons Edward and Bongmusa could have begun a
rivalry that will see the winning times come down, in
particular on the Up Run.
The old adage once again proved true, that the first
runner to crest the top of Polly’s with 8km to go will
go on to win the race, but there was still a twist in
the tail. Edward stretched his lead over Bongmusa
to nearly a full minute, but the defending champ had
one last effort in his legs and began closing the gap
again. However, making up almost 60 seconds over
the final 7km would require a superhuman effort, or for
the leader to blow completely. It didn’t happen, and
Edward took the win.
“The difference between the days of Kotov, Bester or
Fordyce is that from a very early stage in the race, the
main guns are racing each other hard. David Gatebe
started racing and pushing the pace from just after
Drummond. That never happened in the previous
eras, and that is why I believe the men’s Up times of
yesteryear are faster. But if the main contenders run
maybe just that little bit more conservatively in the
first half, you have athletes in there in who can smash
Leonid Shvetsov’s 5:24:49 course record.”
After the race, Edward said that he had dug deep
into his reserves of strength to overcome Bongmusa
on Polly’s, but that he had actually surprised himself
by winning: “I didn’t plan to win; I just wanted a gold
medal! So when Bongmusa went, I never increased
my pace to catch him, I stuck to my pace. I gave
it everything. I just pushed harder.” For his part, a
gracious Bongmusa conceded that the better man on
the day won, and he added, “I could see Edward had
a plan… everything I did he could respond to.” Lindsey’s thoughts are echoed by Nick: “Edward will
make big statements going forward. He had a plan,
and we as the Nedbank Running Club supported him
financially when he took leave to train in Dullstroom
and worked on tactics. He only left the camp in
Dullstroom three days before the race. Look, the times
they ran are not so fast, but both Bongmusa and
Edward are the athletes to take the Up Run to another
level, and there are more athletes coming through,
so I think this year’s race has shown that the time will
improve in the next few years.”
Huge Significance Change of Focus?
Interestingly, the approach by Edward and Bongmusa
in the build-up to Comrades was very different.
Olympic marathon berth and rather chase Frith van
der Merwe’s Down record of 5:54:43? After all, she
did hint at the post-race media briefing that she was
not entirely done with the Comrades yet, but Nick
quickly puts that question to rest. “No, Gerda will
focus on the Olympics, no Comrades record attempt
next year,” he says, adding that he reckons her best
time in the marathon is still to come. “I think she can
do at least 2:25. She is such a class runner, and it is
just impossible to actually say how fast she can go
over the marathon.”
Here again, Lindsay echoes Nick, saying that Gerda is
something different. “Nick has done an incredible job in
coaching Gerda, and they obviously have the formula
down right, but she is a one-in-a-generation athlete,
and it would be really interesting to see what she could
do as a marathoner. Frith’s best marathon time was
2:27, and I think Gerda is way better than that.”
To put Gerda’s performance into even greater
perspective, last year’s Down winner, Ann Ashworth,
congratulated Gerda and said, “Not even at my best
could I have broken six hours.” Remember, Ann’s
6:10:04 last year was run on a route that was 90km
long, a fair bit longer than normal and would have
equated to a 6:04 on the old course, which would
have made it the fourth-best time ever run. So that is
high praise indeed. Meanwhile, one thing is for sure...
the 2019 Comrades Marathon has raised the bar
exponentially as to what we can expect in the future.
Gerda’s win has raised many questions, notably
whether she should now forgo her dream of a 2020
“one thing is for sure...
the 2019 Comrades
Marathon has raised
the bar exponentially as
to what we can expect in
the future”
18
ISSUE 120 JULY 2019 / www.modernathlete.co.za
Incredible Dual on Pollies