Modern Athlete Magazine Issue 128, March 2020 | Page 28

ROAD RUNNING
You see them coming down the road towards you, a large group of
women, all running, chatting and laughing, enjoying the safety in
numbers that a running group brings as they pursue their running
goals. This is just one of the many Catch Me If You Can running
groups that have been established all over South Africa, and we caught
up with Sabrina Walter, one of the founders of this amazing running
movement. – BY PJ MOSES
A few years ago, Cape Town-based runner Sabrina
Walter heeded this call to activism and felt the urge to
be part of that conversation for change. However, she
didn’t just want her words to be heard, she needed
her actions to be seen by others, and this led her to
create an all-women running movement called Catch
Me If You Can, or CMIYC for short. “I was born and
raised in a small suburb close to Berlin, in Germany,
where I was lucky to enjoy a great childhood, growing
up in a very safe environment. So walking to school
as a kid, or taking public transport as a young woman
at night, was an absolute norm for me, but when I
arrived in South Africa 10 years ago, it did not take
long to understand how different it is to live here,”
says Sabrina.
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“I believe that we, as a society, have to change in
order to make this country a better place. We have
to get up, march, run, protest and speak up for our
rights. This is how I grew up, and I believe it will
always be the right thing to do. Growing up free of
gender discrimination, and being safe wherever I
wanted to go, made me realise how lucky I was. I
could always speak up, and I always did.”
Time For Action
This motivated Sabrina to do something about the
issue in SA, and so she enlisted the help of her friend,
partner in crime and fellow German expat, Leni Ullrich.
Sabrina was originally a ballet dancer, and admits
she never really enjoyed sport, but somehow had
gravitated into becoming a runner. “There are more
people running in South Africa than in Germany. I
think the beautiful routes and the great weather play
a big role, and I’ve met hundreds of people who have
ISSUE 128 MARCH 2020 / www.modernathlete.co.za
finished a marathon in South Africa, but in Germany I
only have one friend who ever ran a marathon.”
With this in mind, she and Leni identified running as a
good place to start tackling the women’s safety issue.
Together they launched CMIYC in March 2014, putting
in some really hard work to grow it from scratch
and invest in the community, in spite of having no
financial backing. One of the first steps was putting a
team of volunteers together to lead the way for other
women and the idea quickly caught on, with an eager
community of female runners taking full advantage
of this new focal point for the active woman and her
friends. The word spread like wildfire, and today they
have more than 50 CMIYC Leaders running all over
Cape Town and Johannesburg, offering free, safer
weekly all-women group runs.
One of the early CMIYC events took place in March
2016, following the senseless killings of two teenage
girls in Cape Town, Sinoxolo Mafevuka in Khayalitsha
T
he world has for many years been stained
by the fact that gender-based violence and
the horrible criminal acts committed against
women and children seem to be increasing and
getting worse by the day. As a result, women all over
the world feel threatened and unsafe, which has led
to many campaigns, programmes and educational
drives, as well as the creation of hashtags and
campaigns on social media, where those involved are
trying hard to combat this scourge by making their
collective voices heard.
“When I moved here, I was in my early twenties
and all I wanted to do was to travel the world as a
young woman, but after a couple of months in South
Africa, I realised that I wanted to stay. I worked as
a freelancer at the time, while I was making efforts
to put this dream into reality, and then life took root
as I became a mother, started my own business
and came to call this beautiful city my new home. I
have never looked back, nor regretted my decision.
But as beautiful as every day is, surrounded by the
mountains and the sea, I get a daily reminder of the
pain and inequality that many of our fellow citizens
have to deal with,” she continues.