COMRADES CENTENARY was no National Anthem , Shosholoza , Chariots of Fire or the famous Max Trimborn cockcrow to get the run started . A few homeless people were milling around , but nobody gave any indication of understanding what I was doing out at that time of the morning .
being a “ pedestrian ” on a National Highway . However , on the way to the start , I had to shake off the strange nagging question that had popped into my mind while driving down to Durban : Why on earth was I going to put myself through a 90km run that will probably mean nothing to anybody except myself ? I reminded myself that the reason for this was to remember , as intended by Vic Clapham , and also to pay tribute to the memory of my father , who had served near the end of the Second World War .
At 4:30am on 24 May , I set out from City Hall in Durban . It was a very quiet start , nothing like the deafening noise we would normally experience as the countdown to the now traditional 5:30 start . There
I moved quietly up West Street , watching carefully to ensure I did not miss the turn onto the N3 highway . After about 2km I was very relieved to see that my seconding team , made up of my wife Vanessa , eldest sister Sandra and youngest daughter Jo-ann , had also navigated through the area and on to the route ( West Street is a one-way road ). I quickly realised how fortunate we are to have road closures whenever we run the race . For most of the route , there is no space to run next to the traffic , but we do not experience this in the race as we simply follow the runners through the barriers on the cordoned off roads .
I had fortunately found a headlamp while looking for some running-related items in preparation for the run . When there were no streetlights , I had to use the lamp to light the road ahead , but whenever there was enough light , I could change the function to a flashing red light and turn the headband it was mounted on 180 degrees , to let people behind me know that I was on the route . Fortunately , the roads were not too busy , and my wife was able to drive behind me with the hazard lights on , so that I was protected from behind whenever the traffic allowed for it .
CAREFUL NAVIGATION
My wife had gone over the route many times , and we had set up a sheet with every road change along the way , which we printed out . Despite this meticulous attention to detail , we could not plan for the ongoing roadworks along the route , and having missed the turn to the chicken farm on the drive down to Durban , we knew that any wrong turn could make running along an incorrect route almost impossible to recover from .
Ready to start in a very quiet Durban
After passing through some roadworks about 10km into the run , I knew that the turn to Cowies Hill would be critical . Despite having completed the ‘ Up run ’ on 16 occasions , I knew that it was easy to forget one of the turns , as we would normally be chatting to another runner at this point of the race , and not really paying attention to each twist and turn on the road . My seconds also knew all this , and made sure I took the correct road at around 13km . After that I started to relax for the first time .
I had a comfortable run up and over Cowies Hill , and then made the best of relaxing on the downhill into Pinetown . At the top end of Pinetown , just before the climb up Fields Hill , I could see the traffic getting very busy , but that hour of sleep sacrificed in the morning was proving to be a good investment .
As the climb started , I met up with my seconds and took on a new bottle of water , knowing that it would not be possible to see them again till the top of the hill . Contrary to all the advice of always running facing the traffic , I chose to do the climb with the traffic behind me . There was little space to run on , but I thought that running facing traffic would have been more dangerous , as the vehicles would be coming down the hill faster , and they would have the sun in their eyes !
TACKLING THE HILLS
Maintaining a comfortable pace and feeling as if the wind was pushing me up the hills , I passed over Botha ’ s and Fields Hills . While those are the named hills , there were plenty of other shorter climbs that kept the progress to the halfway point ‘ interesting .’ Around 38km , my seconds passed in the opposite direction , going in search of a bathroom , as I moved closer to halfway . Finally , there were a few decent downhill sections that I could relax on and start getting my mind around taking on the second half .
A while later , I had been running for over 20 minutes without seeing my crew and was getting a bit low on fluids . I had to balance using what I had against making sure I conserved enough until I saw them again , without the risk of longer-term effects of dehydrating . With less than 50ml remaining , they came past me , but were not able to stop for over
33