n the 2017 Comrades, Maria crossed the line in a personal best 7:41:42 for her fourth Bill Rowan

“ I come from a big family, with 10 boys and five girls, and I saw my mom was suffering, so I decided to help her by dropping out of school and starting to work. I stopped sport when I started working, but I used to love running, even though the teachers thought I was a sprinter and always put me in the 100m, because of my body shape. I was never a sprinter, but I still loved running,” says Maria.

DESIRE TO RUN AGAIN

It was many years later, while watching the 2008 Comrades Marathon on TV, that Maria rediscovered her desire to run, and that prompted her to want to go for a 10km jog, but she admits she did not know how to get started. Fortunately, her employer at the time, was more than willing to help when Maria asked for help a few months later.“ I was working for Shashika Ramsamy in Bryanston and told her I wanted to start running, so she Googled info for me on beginner running and said I should join a club. Then she looked for clubs in our area and got info for me about the Run / Walk For Life club just around the corner from us. She told me to go ask them if they can help me, so I went and met Michelle Orlando, the branch manager, and she told me to come and join that same day at 4pm. I was so excited that I was finally going to run, but when she made me run just five minutes that first time, I was not happy! I thought,‘ Oh no, this is not for me,’ because my goal was to run 42km comfortably and then run the Comrades, not five minutes!”

With Michelle’ s guidance, Maria steadily built up her mileage and went on to run her first road race in early 2009, at the Randburg Valentines 10km, but she admits she was still itching to go further and faster than Michelle was telling her to.“ She told me to train and build up from five minutes to 50 minutes, and

then run that first race around 60 minutes, but she said I must take it easy. She was happy and said I was in good shape, but now we must build up to 15km, then 21km, and only much later the 42km. I was not happy, because I wanted to go further and faster, but I realise now she knew what she was doing.”

The reason Maria knows this now is because she had to learn the age old lesson of running the hard way: Too much, too soon, may lead to an over-use injury. It happened because she moved from doing that first 10km race to tackling the Old Mutual Two Oceans 56km ultra-marathon just a few months later.“ I didn’ t listen to Michelle and that led to ITB from overtraining. I still ran the Two Oceans with the ITB, finishing in 5:19:50, but it set me back, and so no Comrades that year.”

DOING IT HER WAY

The following year, she did make it to the Comrades, and clocked an impressive 9:42:39 on debut, but again, her expectations and reality were not quite in tune.“ I said I wanted to run my first Comrades in sub- 9 hours, because it was 87 kays, and 10km / h sounded doable, but I didn’ t realise how far it was, and once again I didn’ t want to listen to Michelle about taking it easy in my first one. I was still very happy to cross the line in 9:42, but in 2011 I wanted to break nine hours. I did that second one in 9:24 and got my Back2Back medal, but I still had 24 minutes to take off.”

Once again, the advice of more experienced runners proved true, as Maria overdid the running in 2012 and picked up a stress facture and tendonitis in the same leg, although she still managed a 5:57:12 Two Oceans finish.“ I told Beth Hammer, the new manager at Run / Walk For Life, that something was wrong with my foot, because I could only run 1km before the pain came.

Images: Jetline Action Photo