Instead of waking up just after yesterday to catch the 3am busses to the start , I decided to chance the Polokwane Uber driver network . I have successfully used Uber to get to marathon starts in Cape Town , where the drivers tell me that I am an unusual fare at that time of the day , as they are normally carting drunken students home . However , I was taking a chance that Polokwane nightlife would extend into the early hours of the morning . It did look like I ’ d found myself a driver , but after I disappeared for necessary ablutions , my designated driver disappeared , too , and then the Uber network went dead .

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 . Having run all their marathons and ultras , I thought that I was done with Polokwane , but then the new Seshego Marathon popped up on the calendar , and sweating out 50 kays seemed an appropriate way to spend Workers ’ Day .

I therefore resorted to my back-up plan of driving to the start , and would Uber back to my car after finishing . The start was listed as the Paledi Mall , and there were several other runners who had a similar idea . There was a 24-hour McDonalds at the mall , so I popped in for a quick McSlash™ and then headed to what I assumed was the start , an intersection populated by a large rasher of policemen . By now there was a small gathering of us ‘ mall parkers ’ hunting for the start line , so I asked the closest policeman where the start was , but he pointed down the road into the distance and said , “ It ’ s quite far that way .”

The adventure in running marathons is getting to the start …

In Search of the Start

Quite far proved to be just over two kilometres away from Paledi Mall , but luckily a runner from Newcastle ( actually his wife and their bakkie ) came to our aid as we piled onto the back . I have been struggling to fit into my running pants since COVID , but a fast and frosty ride on the back of a bakkie left me feeling a little ‘ looser ’ after dropping a couple of cup sizes .