Modern Athlete Magazine Issue 64, November 2014 | Page 41

WOMEN’S RUNNING

Ma

Exciting
Times Ahead
In September, a flurry of fast marathon times were
run by various South African women, which has got
the pundits talking about the next golden age of SA
marathoning hopefully being just around the corner.
– BY SEAN FALCONER

I

t started with Mapaseka Makhanya clocking
2:36:36 in the Gauteng Marathon on 7 September,
taking 30 seconds off her previous best. Then came
Zintle Xiniwe’s SA Champs title-winning run of
2:41:49 in her debut marathon at the Sanlam Cape
Town Marathon on 21 September, and six days later,
another debutant, Jenna Challenor, clocked 2:41:44
at the Petro SA Marathon in Mossel Bay. The highlight
of the month then came on 27 September, when
Rene Kalmer finished ninth in the Berlin Marathon in
2:29:27, slashing 32 seconds off her previous best and
running her second sub-2:30. Now, while these times
do not challenge Elana Meyer’s SA record of 2:25:15,
set in Boston 20 years ago, it does bode well for the
upcoming years of women’s marathoning in SA.

GOLDEN YEARS

The late 90s are considered the golden age of SA
women’s marathoning. Between 1994 and 1999 Elana
and Colleen De Reuck ran six and seven sub-2:30
times respectively, and only Frith van der Merwe’s
2:27:36 of 1990 still made it into the top 10 times
– and it was tenth on the list of 14 sub-2:30 times,
so dominant were Elana and Colleen. We then had
to wait until 2011 for our next sub-2:30, when Rene
clocked 2:59:59 in Yokohama, Japan, to become
SA’s fourth-fastest female marathoner and claim 15th
position on the all-time list of performances. Another
gap of about three years followed before our next
sub-2:30, thanks to Rene’s superb run in Berlin, which
bumped her up to 14th on the all-time list.
No other South African woman has been able to dip
under 2:30, but if you look at the next few names
on the list, many of whom are only just beginning to
focus on the marathon, then you’ll see that the alltime list could be shaken up a bit in the near future.
Most of these girls have focused on 10km or the half

marathon in recent years, and thus they have the
speed necessary to do well at the marathon, and just
as importantly, they have not over-raced at longer
distances up till now, nor done any of the popular
ultras that dominate the SA road running calendar.

NEW KIDS ON