ASKING THE QUESTION
C o l u m n
Some argue against wave starts because of medal cutoffs , but it can be done
As the Comrades route is so congested , a rethink may be needed …
Image : Courtesy Comrades Marathon for Ann to get the Race Advisory Committee ( RAC ) and Board to be open to outside advice and suggestions is a major turning point , and a bright hope for the future of the event . And ironically , the decision to review and amend midrace cut-offs three times was probably the most effective marketing move for the CMA – greater than any of the media releases in the entire build up to race day .
Insanity of Repetitive Failure
The famous saying by Albert Einstein goes that the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over , but hoping for a different outcome . Well , recent organisational history at Comrades had seen errors being repeated on both Up and Down runs , and it was about to be continued in 2024 , until Ann reintroduced the concept of commonsense . The cut-offs provide the ideal example of this at work .
In 2015 , the first cut-off was set as two hours 40 minutes ( 2:40 ) around 400m before the top of Cowies Hill , which was around 16.8km into the Up Run . The 2016 Down Run saw the organisers introduce a new era of irrational cut-off times , despite written private approaches that proved they would unreasonably challenge runners . These were ignored , and in the 2017 Up Run , the first cut-off was changed from Cowies Hill to the Pinetown underpass , but the time of 2:40 was kept the same , despite adding around 1.9km to the distance ! Unsurprisingly this failed massively , to the point that the Comrades volunteers and KZN Athletics Technical Officials had to extend that by an additional five minutes and 56 seconds . Even then , they cut off 28 people !
The damage of an early cut-off is like having a cold : You don ’ t see the results immediately , but they make themselves known down the road … and that year , there were 3000 runners who had been forced to run too fast to Pinetown , who were subsequently cut off , in an exhausted state , at halfway , Cato Ridge , Umlazi Road and Polly Shortts . By the end of the race , over 4000 runners had been ‘ culled ,’ primarily because of the enforced fast start . So , one would think lesson learnt ? Unfortunately , with the race changing direction each year , the ‘ brains trust ’ within the organisation must have forgotten the 2017 problems when they pulled out the documents for review in 2019 , as they used the exact same 2:40 cut-off for Pinetown ! Again , submissions of concern were ignored , and the CMA stubbornly refused to acknowledge any errors .
The vast increase in exhausted runners from incorrect cut-offs became so problematic that the CMA , in its wisdom , reduced the qualifying time from five hours to 4:50 , blaming runners for not training well enough ! The fact is that the CMA was to blame for depriving many of these runners a finish , because they set cut-offs that require runners to have a 4:50 marathon ability , even 4:45 . Those outside that were being forced to run beyond their means early on so . As in any race , they blew up , and were spent by the second half of the race !
Saved by the Roadworks
Ahead of the 2019 Up Run , there were roadworks at 45th Cutting , prompting more warnings that there would be both a danger of congestion and a slowing of runners as they tried to ease through the single lane provided . It was only when the issue was publicly raised at the media conference three days prior to the race that the CMA took a last-minute decision to remove the first cut-off , and this assisted in avoiding a repeat of the Pinetown mass culling . ( On the day , the backmarkers at the Westwood intersection had to use both the normal single lane through the roadworks as well as the bridge on- and off-ramps to make it through .)
Again , logic says the decision-makers would have learnt from this , but after the COVIDenforced break , followed by two consecutive Down Runs , when the initial cut-offs were announced for 2024 ’ s Up Run , the CMA had made it 2:45 at Pinetown . Not only were they repeating the same mistake , but confirming yet again that there was no-one in the organisation who really understood the technical and logistical aspect of the race .
To be fair , this was in Ann ’ s ‘ honeymoon period ,’ when she was still getting up to speed on the job , but the calls for common sense to prevail forced the Board to listen , and the RAC was forced to acknowledge the need for review , which in turn led to more feedback and two more reviews . Clearly , the past eight years had seen mistakes made , and the instant confirmation of that is seen in the fact that the 2024 Comrades finish rate increased ( at last ) to over 91 %.
A Brighter Future
The cut-offs issue is just one example of decisions by the CMA that make me shake my head . Another was the decision to return to the Kingsmead cricket stadium for the finish of the 2023 Down Run . After 2016 , the CMA announced that Kingsmead was too small to accommodate the race , and moved the 2018 finish to the Moses Mabhida Stadium . Then , ignoring the 2016 lessons , the CMA went back to Kingsmead , and repeated the same layout , with all the same problems . And this year , with potentially more runners ( and spectators ), the flow of people at the Scottsville finish in Pietermaritzburg was constrained to a small area , in spite of the abundance of space that the venue offers , and it forced ‘ single lane traffic ’ over even steeper scaffolding stairs than in previous years , leading to a terrible traffic jam of people hardly able to move .
I sometimes wonder if the CMA simply pulls out the plans of the previous Up or Down Run , ignores any and all debrief notes , and repeats all errors ! So , while we saw that in a mere eight months ( including the Festive month office closure ), Ann brought innovations in many aspects of the race , one would expect portfolio heads to have learnt from previous matters that she was possibly not even aware of , instead of repeating mistakes of the past . Now , with a first race under her belt , there is a brighter light ahead , particularly if she has led the Board and CMA structures to understand the value of listening and accessing external advice , and an appreciation that there can always be new learning .
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