RACE CALENDAR

South African athletes are blessed with an incredible number of running events , including not only road and trail running , but also many other running-related disciplines , so check out SA ’ s most complete running calendar , featuring two months of upcoming fixtures , and get your entries in , all right here !

– COMPILED BY NICOLE HAYES

’ ve been involved in road running since 1995 , and for much of those three decades we had a pretty standard race calendar here in SA . Easter Weekend was synonymous with the Two Oceans Marathon , and 16 June was reserved for the Comrades Marathon . You could plan your running year around those two dates , and the rest of the race calendar took its lead from that , notably qualifying marathons and longer races that can be used for training runs .

However , with Easter moving each year according to the moon ’ s cycles , it could lie anywhere on the calendar from late March to late April . This meant that athletes planning to race both of the two big ultras were massively affected , as the gap between the two races could be anything from a runner-friendly 10 or 11 weeks , to just seven or eight weeks , which meant substantially less recovery time before Comrades .

The other big effect was on the race calendar , most notably in Western Province , but also felt in many other provinces . Every time Easter and Two Oceans moved – sometimes by up to four weeks – it caused a bit of a bunfight between clubs in the annual fixtures planning meetings . However , in recent years , things have really changed .

Shaking Things Up

First , the Comrades moved off the 16 June public holiday and experimented with various dates , including 2022 ’ s late August date , but seems to have settled on the second weekend of June . Sidenote : That August move last year led to all sorts of movement of races last year , even the creation of new ( later ) qualifying marathons , and I reckon there must be some frustrated clubs , organisers and sponsors now that Comrades is back in June .

Meanwhile , for the first the first time since 1972 , the Two Oceans will not be on Easter Weekend this year , but rather on the weekend following Easter , 15-16 April . If the race moves permanently to the second weekend of April , then it will establish a set gap of two months between the two big ultras ( give or take a few days ).

If so , logic seems to dictate that the rest of the Western Province events can avoid that annual bunfight I mentioned , but there is still a wee problem … Easter will continue to move each year , and sooner or later this would mean the second weekend of April once again hosting Easter . So , I did a little experiment to see how this could affect the Two Oceans race date over the next two decades , and in my envisaged model , the new race weekend would only clash four times in the next 20 years .

YEAR EASTER POSSIBLE TWO OCEANS DATE

All in all , that doesn ’ t seem too much of an issue , so I reckon this could prove to be a good move for all involved . Of course , the running community still has to get used to not running Two Oceans on Easter Weekend , but as they say , this too shall pass .

64 ISSUE 158 | www . modernathlete . co . za