Modern Athlete Magazine Issue 129, April 2020 | Page 11

IN THE LEAD
“Then a lady called me and said she’d sponsor me
R50 a kay, and all the proceeds would go to the Con-
Amore School in Kempton Park, a school for disabled
kids and kids with autism, so right there I had my
motivation.”
Having received several more offers of sponsorships
for this cause, Bennie set an early alarm so that he
could start his run at 4:30am, but he awoke to the
sound of heavy rain. He decided to wait and see if it
stopped, but after two hours it was still falling, so he
decided he would just have to run in the rain.
Everything Hurting
What followed was 360 laps of a route going through
his garden, around his house, through the garage, and
up and down the long driveway to the street. “A full
lap worked out to about 250m, and even went through
my garage, which meant a little bit of uphill, too, so if
you work it out, it amounts to 360 laps, so my body
was aching. The difference between the real Comrades
and a Comrades in your backyard is that there are a lot
more twists and turns. I mean, the one turn was 180
degrees, and that really hurt!” says Bennie.
Thankfully, he was ably seconded throughout the run
by his wife Isabel and three sons, Hugo, Ruben and
Zion, who all took turns to run a few laps with him
during the day. Finally, 11 hours and 55 minutes after
starting, Bennie crossed the finish line, accompanied
by the strains of Chariots of Fire as his family held a
home-made finishing tape for him and handed him
a home-made medal. Factoring in regular stops for
refreshments and changing into dry clothes several
times, his actual running time was 10:29 for the
Comrades distance.
Bennie as he
normally looks on
the open trails
Having done the calculations of laps and pledges,
Bennie had raised R27,000 for the school, thanks to
his sponsors. However, more was to come. When
news broke of his run, other donors came forward
with further contributions, and according to a very
grateful Bennie, the final donation to the school will
be very close to R70,000! “The marathon was far from
easy, as it challenged both my physical and mental
strength, but it was so worth it!” he says.
Good Time for a First Marathon
Runner: Ndyebo Mapekula,
Cape Town
Ndyebo decided
he was ready for
a marathon
C
oming from a sprinting background,
including participating in three provincial
championships, and only having moved into
road running in 2017, running marathons definitely
does not come naturally to Ndyebo Mapekula, but his
training in recent months has been geared to longer
distances, which allowed him to tackle his first ever
marathon in his backyard in the first week of April, as
part of the Mzansi Marathon Challenge. But instead of
doing it over 21 days, he decided to do it in one day.
You see, Ndyebo is captain of the Cape Town branch
of the adidas Runners (aR) club, and he was recently
selected to represent South Africa later this year in the
adidas-sponsored The Speed Project 6.0 international
challenge, where he would have helped his six-man
relay team run 550km to Las Vegas in the USA. “I
felt excited, incredibly proud and honoured when I
was offered the opportunity to be part of The Speed
Project 6.0,” says Ndyebo.
“Never in my wildest dreams would I have thought
that I would be representing South Africa by running
a 550km relay. Because I come from track and field,
I’m not accustomed to running 30km in one go, which
I found incredibly challenging, but I was looking
forward to pushing my body and mind to its limits.
I love challenging myself, so it would have been an
awesome experience. I was also looking forward
to meeting people from different backgrounds and
running with individuals from four different continents
Changing to Plan B
The Challenge has had to be put on hold due to the
pandemic, but Ndyebo wanted to test his newfound
long-distance fitness. Inspired by the online videos
posted by Lee Ryan, captain of the aR Dubai, who
ran 100km in his 30m backyard, Ndyebo decided
to tackle his own challenge. “I was inspired by how
determined Lee was to complete this mountain of
a task, so I decided to run my first ever 42km in the
grounds of my apartment complex,” he says.
Remarkably, Ndyebo only made the decision the
evening before embarking on his marathon, and was
up at 5am the next morning to start the challenge. He
admits that he had no idea what to expect, or how his
body would react, and thus he just tried to focus on
Lee’s advice to keep a positive mindset. And just over
five hours later, he had done it.
“I’m not a marathon runner and never thought I’d run
one. I usually only run up to 21km, and the furthest I’d
run in one go was 25km. I did it not to test if I can do
it physically, but if I was able to do it mentally, to dig in
deep, with every step, to find the fuel to carry on when
I was running on empty, literally. The way that Lee kept
going back to one’s mindset, that’s what made me
challenge myself, not just physically but mentally too.”
Rene Vollgraaff,
Johannesburg
“I was just going for a Thursday night run, while listening to
the President’s speech, and when I got to lap 74, he said “the
lockdown is extended by two weeks.” I even marked that
exact point on my lap chart! So I thought, then I may as well
just keep running, and did 100 miles. The GPS says 100km,
but it was actually 100 miles. The GPS gets confused in my
small garden!
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