South African icons and regular runners share what inspired them to tackle the Comrades Marathon.
By Mark Etheridge
LOUIS MASSYN
( With 50 Comrades Marathons under his belt, Massyn has run the most in history and is back this year for a 51 st.)
BRUCE FORDYCE
( Comrades King, with eight consecutive wins and nine in total)
“ It all started with a sermon in the Holy Cross Anglican Church in Odendalsrus when the bishop of Bloemfontein used the Comrades Marathon as an example …. I sat in the congregation and said to myself:‘ Massyn, the next year you’ re going to run’. That was my first inspiration. The sermon was near the end of 1972 and my first Comrades was 1973. When I ran Comrades I was 1009th in a time of 10hr 13min, the first time there were 1000 finishers at Comrades and the cut-off time was still 11hr.”
“ I was always good at athletics in my school days, so running was in my blood. But then followed two years of no running, mainly because I was busy drinking at varsity! I watched the’ 76 Comrades – the first year it was shown on TV … not live but a packaged version. Alan Robb won that year. I didn’ t think I would win the race but I saw that an average person could finish it. One of my mates, Jean Leger, ran a silver medal time. I saw it presented in a beautiful box and said to myself:‘ I want one of those’… Another reason was that my girlfriend at the time broke up with me, so I had nothing to do but train!”
JOWAINE PARROTT
( SA’ s first woman of colour to win a Comrades gold medal)
SANDILE SIGILA
( Running his seventh Comrades for RCS Gugulethu AC and survivor of a brain aneurysm in 2011)
“ I started running at SACOS and by 1986, I became the best runner in the fold – virtually unbeaten in road races. However, I yearned to be the best in SA – not best black, brown or whatever. During unity in the early 1990s, I did fairly well in shorter road races but still wasn’ t No. 1. The other runners were definitely faster than I was. So, there really was only one option left – try to be the country’ s best in Two Oceans and Comrades. My first son, Aydn, was born in 1993 and in 1994, ASA selected a national team to race visiting internationals, but they didn’ t select me. So, I decided to enter Comrades as part of my quest to be SA’ s best ultra-distance female runner and to beat the runners selected. In the end, I was sixth, beating every runner in the national team bar one. So, basically I was inspired on two counts to run the 1994 Comrades: to beat the national team of selected runners and to be the best in the country in one discipline of road running.”
“ My running journey started around 2009 … My cousin from Johannesburg came to run Two Oceans. At the Expo I noticed that many of the African guys were speaking Sotho and Zulu and not isiXhosa and didn’ t see many guys from my community, so I decided to start running myself. I wanted to stretch my limits so went from 10 to 21.1km, eventually the marathon and still couldn’ t understand these guys spending seven hours or more on the road for the Comrades. I thought, no ways, I can’ t run 90km, but soon started training for it. After I ran my first one, I got such a great response from people in Gugulethu, especially the youngsters who didn’ t have role models or mentors, so every time I put on my vest to run Comrades, a big reason is to inspire the youth of my community to start running!”
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