Modern Athlete Magazine Issue 121, August 2019 | Page 58

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Form
Rory nears the crest of the big Tourelle
climb, towards the end of the Dodo Trail
50km in Mauritius
Fresh from finishing eighth in the incredibly technical Dodo Trail 50km in Mauritius and then winning the Bastille Day 25km
Trail Run back in SA just a week later, the last month has seen a welcome upturn in form and health for 27-year-old Cape
Town trail runner Rory Scheffer. And it’s good timing, he says, as he works up to his big goal later this year, to do well in
the Alps in France. – BY SEAN FALCONER
Y
ou would be forgiven for not recognising
trail running star Rory Scheffer (pronounced
Skeffer) if you looked at photographs of him
from the year 2010. That’s because there was a whole
lot more of him back then! You see, Rory had grown
up in the KZN Midlands and earned regional colours
in hockey, raced semi-pro endure motorbikes and also
ran cross country and middle distance on the track,
specialising in the 1500m. But then midway through
his grade 11 year, his parents split and he moved
to Port Elizabeth. Whereas his old school had been
heavily focused on sports, his new school was far
more focused on academics, so he says his sporting
activity began dwindling.
“Halfway through Matric I just stopped playing sport
altogether, for a year and a half, and I soon put on
quite a bit of weight, about 20 kilograms. Then in my
gap year in 2011, I went back to running and started
losing a bit of weight. In 2012 I started running a
bit more seriously and did my first trail race, the
Woodbridge Shore Run in Port Elizabeth, when a
friend said, let’s go do it. I finished last, but I thought,
hey, I enjoy running, so if I train next year, I’ll come
back and see how much better I can do. Well, I came
top 10 the year after that!”
With the running bug having bitten, Rory threw
himself into his running, and in 2014 made another
breakthrough when he won the two-day Giant’s
Cup Trail race in the Drakensberg, over 62km, then
went back in 2015 and won again in an even faster
time. “So 2014 was kind of when my career actually
kicked off, and became something that I wanted to do
more seriously, and take things more professionally.
I moved to Cape Town in 2016 to pursue running as
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ISSUE 121 AUGUST 2019 / www.modernathlete.co.za
a career, and today I’m semi-pro, so I earn a living
through my day job as a photographer, but also
have the time to train and race, and I am fortunate
to have the support of great sponsors that make it
all possible, notably Salomon, MyWater, Science in
Sport, Complex and Squirrel Nut Butter.”
“I think trail running internationally has grown to a
level where you can pursue it as a career, and in South
Africa it’s catching up. It’s important to find a brand
that fits your lifestyle – for me, I always dreamed of
running for Salomon, so I’m super-stoked to have
signed with them. That said, when I first started
running well and won the Giant’s Cup, I perhaps
thought I was bit bigger of a deal than I really was. I
went looking for sponsors and e-mailed upwards of
70 businesses, saying this is who I am, this is what I
do. In hindsight, it was a bit overambitious of me...”
INTERNATIONAL EXPOSURE
On top of various local wins and podium finishes,
Rory really threw his name into the ring last year when
he finished ninth at the Otter Marathon Trail Run in
the Southern Cape. With the race hosting the finale of
the international Golden Trail Series, it attracted some
of the best trail runners in the world to South Africa
and gave the race its strongest field to date, and thus
Rory’s top-10 finish really made sponsors and event
organisers take note.
That helped him get over to France last year for
his first 100km race, the Courmayeur-Champex-
Chamonix (CCC) that forms part of the week-long
Ultra-Trail du Mont Blanc (UTMB) event in Chamonix,
France. The UTMB festival is considered the pinnacle
event of world trail running, and Rory finished a
Rory has become an
elite-level trail runner
in the last few years