Modern Athlete Magazine Issue 121, August 2019 | Page 58

G N I R A O R Back to 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 58 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