Marathon # 248 / Unique Marathon # 146 / 10 April 2022
THE RUNNING
MANN the running mann by STUART MANN
Water Everywhere , But Nothing to Drink
As regular readers of this column know , I love running marathons and ultra-marathons , and thus I regularly travel all over South Africa to get my 42.2km fix . In April , I was in Durban for the Durban City Marathon , and unfortunately , it turned out to be both a damp and dry squib of an experience .
In writing my monthly marathon articles , I normally find that there is high correlation between the responsiveness of race organisers and the overall organisational quality of their race , so when I get no response to my enquiries , the alarm bells go off . The organisers of the Durban City Marathon are the Durban City Multi Sport Club . This club seems to have successfully avoided leaving any digital footprint , with a Google search producing zero hits . The club had no entrants at this year ’ s Two Oceans Marathon and only three finishers at the last Comrades Marathon .
Things you don ’ t need for this race : A fishing rod . Things you do need : A straw to suck up some delicious rain water (# CarryYourOwn KZN-style )
On face value , this does not seem like the kind of club that would be given the organisation rights to the flagship marathon in South Africa ’ s third-largest city . However , this is the club that most of the technical officials in KZN Athletics belong to . I am not sure if they have a club motto , but if they do , I would not be surprised if it ’ s , “ Do as I say , not as I do .”
There was no reply from any of the listed race contacts to my April Marathons article email enquiries , there was no reply to the web form enquiry I submitted on the official race website , and most of the information on the site was still from the COVID-cancelled 2020 race . The alarms bells were ringing loudly , and my expectations for this race were low . Let ’ s just say that that if Durban City Multi Sport Club entered a limbo competition , they would comfortably slide below the lowest rung on the expectation bar …
Images : Martin Mulder , Stuart Mann
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