Afritrex - The Marathons
Comrades, South Africa
Distance: 56 miles (87kms )
Date & Time: 15th June 2008, 05:30
Altitude: from 10 to 721m above sea level
No of entrants: 14000
Average temp: 23 degrees
Holders: Leonid Shvetsov & Olesya Nurgalieva RUS
In early June, while the Marathon des Sables basks in the reflected glory of column inches, the hard men of Africa are stirring. They are becoming restless and it has nothing to do with the heat of the Saharah. The Comrades is coming and with it, the gold standard test of an iron will. This is the race that we will judge ourselves by. All the marathons and mountains pale in its shadow. We will be running the equivalent of the London marathon twice in one day, then running another four miles for the hell of it while climbing a summit the height of Ben Nevis.
The Comrades Marathon is the African ultramarathon run over a herculean 56 miles up the valley of a thousand hills, from Durban to the capital of Kwazulu-Natal, Pietermaritzburg. The direction of the race alternates each year, and, against popular perception, we have it easy. Believe it or not, running 100km uphill is easier than running downhill. This is especially hard to believe when you glance at the profile map above. The current winner and course record holder, Leonid Shvetsov called it ‘’the world’s best ultramarathon by far,’’, and that was before he won it.
The course
The race is run over a hellishly strenuous course which is fittingly referred to as "The Big Five" (or in our case, the big five of the big five). The Big Five are the devilishly placed hills which on the up run they appear in the following order: Cowies Hill, Field's Hill, Botha's Hill, Inchanga, and finally, Polly Shortts. Above is a map of some of the many places of interest en-route that we will be suffering too much to care about.
History
The race was the idea of World War I veteran Vic Clapham, to commemorate the South African soldiers killed during the war and our participation will be in tribute to the servicemen and women of The Royal Star & Garter. It was run for the first time on 24 May 1921, and except for a break during World War II, it has been run every year since. The 2008 event will be the 83nd running. In recent years, up to 2006, the race was run on 16 June (Youth Day in South Africa). However, due to political pressure during the latter part of 2006 it was decided to hold the event on Sunday 17 June for 2007. The general feeling was that the race diverted attention from the significance of Youth Day.
Winners
The winner of the first Comrades Marathon, in 1921, was Bill Rowan. He completed the 90 km race in 8 hours and 59 minutes, a time we would be immensely proud of achieving.
There have been several multiple winners of the event. The first was Arthur Newton who won five races in the 1920s (1922, 23, 24, 25 & 27). Bruce Fordyce won the race for an unprecedented eight consecutive years between 1981 and 1988; he won it for the ninth time in 1990.
Frith van der Merwe was the first woman to set up astonishing records, including finishing 15th overall (out of all men and women).
Wally Hayward is another race legend. He first won the race in 1930, and then came back to win it in 1950, 1951, 1953 (being the first runner to ever win the race in under six hours), and again in 1954 (for five lifetime wins). He skipped Comrades in 1952 to concentrate on the Helsinki Olympic Marathon, where he placed 10th. Hayward ran Comrades again in 1988 at the age of 79, and ran his last comrades a year later.
- Men, Down Run: Leonid Shvetsov, 2007 5:20:49
- Women, Down Run: Frith van der Merwe, 1989, 5:54:43
- Men, Up Run: Vladimir Kotov, 2000, 5:25:33
- Women, Up Run: Elena Nurgalieva, 2006, 6:09:23
For the race we will have had a long time to train – the whole western coast of Africa in fact…. And we will have to make the most of it, for a little over two weeks after our 56 mile race with nearly a vertical kilometer rise we will be on the road for another Marathon, The Knysna Forest Marathon. Stupid, 
perhaps; painful, definitely. Closer to the time of the Comrades and the Knysna Forest themselves, we will have the pleasure of training on terrain that looks like this picture. We will do our best not to take the signage too personally.
This is the race of our trip, what the official website calls a race that ‘will define you’ and , as the official certificate, above, shows, it will define you as being mad, and gutsy enough to have completed the world’s hardest ultramarathon. Though the certificate kindly doesn’t refrains from stating you finished it as they shut the stragglers out of the Sahara stadium in Durban after 12 hours – but give you a certificate anyway.
Now navigate to -Marrakech | Comrades | Knysna | Victoria Falls | Nairobi | back to Marathons
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