ROAD RUNNING
Round the house if you can ’ t hit the road …
An epic 12-hour run in the rain to end the hard lockdown
The treadmill really proved its worth during lockdown therefore , effectively , take a day off now and again . Having broken the previous record of 365 consecutive marathons and then reached the milestone of 500 , Martinez announced he would push on to 1000 , but when he failed to find the financing to carry on , he ended his challenge on 607 marathons .
Having already run and cycled to support the Brain Child Fund , Rupert says the idea of trying for 1000 days himself sounded like a good way to make more people aware of the challenges facing families with special needs children . Therefore , when he began his challenge , he started with group runs in the mornings , including ‘ coffee runs ,’ where fellow runners were challenged to donate their normal post-run coffee or breakfast money to the challenge .
“ One of the biggest fundraisers for the Brain Child Fund is Brain Child Adventures , which includes groups riding the 947 Ride Joburg and Joburg2C as fundraising events ,” says Rupert . “ I helped with running events , getting people to run kilo ’ s for donations as part of my challenge , and to challenge others to do the same . It was wonderful to see how many of these mini challenges got started , and one of the best aspects of this project is that even though my own challenge has ended , I see some of those minichallenges are still happening .”
“ This became a community-driven effort , with my own club , Overkruin , as well as other clubs in my area all getting involved , such as Pretoria Bobbies ,
Irene , Phobians , as well as clubs in Joburg . I would often go run with the different clubs , either joining their training runs , or running with a club from their clubhouse to the local parkrun , and then running back again . My aim was to get out to as many new people as possible , to grow the challenge ’ s awareness and spread the word of the Fund , so I met a lot of people along the way , including quite a few with handicapped kids , or people with similar experiences to mine .”
Slight Change of Plans
Six months into the challenge , with some 190 marathons under his belt , Rupert was faced with a huge obstacle to his daily marathon challenge when the COVID-induced hard lockdown was introduced throughout South Africa in late March of 2020 . Not only was he no longer allowed to join up with the various running groups to complete his daily quota of kays , but he was not even allowed to go for long runs by himself . Undaunted , he took to running around his house instead .
“ When lockdown started , I challenged myself to run a 1000km around the house , then made it 1000 miles . I was only about 120km short of that when the President announced on a Tuesday night the relaxation to level 4 , to start two days later on the Thursday ,” says Rupert . “ That same night I headed out at 9pm and ran 108km ( 1000 laps ) around the house in 12 hours , then rested , and late the Wednesday afternoon I did another 17km to finish the 1000 miles . My wife ’ s comment was that I am totally mad , especially since it started raining
20 minutes after I started that night , and kept raining till 8am the next morning , just before I finished . I remember thinking , nobody will ever know about this , but I just carried on running .”
Even with level 4 , Rupert still found it hard to join groups and thus make it easier to cover the required distance each day , and he admits that he did think about throwing in the towel . “ I had thoughts about giving up , and knew nobody would judge me for that , but then I thought , I ’ m already so far into this , and I ’ ve already made huge sacrifices for this challenge , so I didn ’ t want to give up . Also , I thought of families with children with special needs , who face daily challenges that seem impossible . It could be financial challenges , needing a new wheelchair , a doctor ’ s visit … Giving up is not an option for these parents . They did not choose their marathon , but they keep going , so how could I give up ?”
Juggling the Balancing Act
On the topic of sacrifices , Rupert says that the running a marathon a day for nearly two years was a huge logistical challenge on various levels . For starters , he had to fit his running in around work , because he still needed to earn a living and provide for his family . “ Thankfully I work for my brother ’ s company in the mining industry , and Rudolph was very accommodating in terms of my time for running , including a period of two weeks when I walked most of my kays , so it took even longer ,” says Rupert .
The hardest part of the challenge
21 was getting going the next day …