ROAD TO COMRADES – post RA RA musing by By Steve Burnett

What is this running club scene anyway?

South African road running is a massive thing, it’s a whole subculture most people are either blissfully unaware or incredibly suspicious of. One condition of doing road running races beyind a half marathon is that you have to join a club, and run in the official club kit – with any variations being a potential disqualification. I saw this is as an admin side issue, I never thought I’d need to join a club to actually go running – I’ll just do my training and the rest of the things I can work out on my own.

The obvious thing was to join my closest club, Fish Hoek AC, but look at that kit, it’s a yellow and black prison outfit – there had to be a better option?! I figured I might only do Comrades once, so might as well get some nice pictures. I settled on the best option of becoming a country member of this club in Benoni that uses the chappies bubblegum design for their vests.

Turns out my wife knows half the stalwarts at the Fishhoek and it’s apparently a great vibe, so she signed us up as a family before my sudden dose of unnecessary vanity could get in the way. The upsides from then on kept on coming.

There’s a thing on the Saturday morning called a “club run”. You can go do anything from 12-25km (and building) in little groups and every 5km or so there’s a car that stops on the side of the road to setup a water station. Things like water/biscuits/coke/jellybabies are just there and members take turns to run it. INCREDIBLE development, all of a sudden getting up at 5:45am on a Saturday morning wasn’t such an issue.

Without me really realizing it, the entire calendar for the first half of the year is clearly structured around Comrades. It just builds up in distance and the training follows suit. It was during this time that it dawned on me that this whole Comrades malarkey wouldn’t quite be the breeze I expected. And that’s where a club and more importantly clubmates come in. Feeling undertrained/overcome/injured/anxious/overconfident/windgat/aimless….there’s someone who’s been there done that and happy to share your issues and add their own experience to ease the anxiety. You can’t put a price on that.

West Coast marathon would be my first lots of things for a while, but mostly I’d be running in that kit for the first time. Amongst many things I got to greet fellow strangers on overtaking(en), a quick acknowledgement of your club mate is somehow a much bigger deal than I thought it would be.

Two Oceans is the highlight and focus of the running season for many, in my mind I had it as a convenient training exercise that popped into the schedule nicely. Amongst many things I learnt that a quirky kit is recognizable if nothing else. The random support you get from strangers just on your outfit is probably worth a hundred free strides each. The day after the run there was a sneaky get together at the club to celebrate everyone and their achievements. I’ve done lots of big events but there’s something special when a group gets together to celebrate all and sundry and their own achievements no matter what they were.

In the background there’s a guy pulling all sort of strings and levers for the Comrades runners from the club to have a good experience. Long runs, a talk by Bruce, special kit for the race it’s all done and so appreciated. Tonight I got celebrated with 35 other club members as the group going to take this on in the club colours. There’s a big contingent of us doing our first, quite a few green numbers (10+) not running but way out there Beaumont is doing his 25th and final. I first met him in the shops looking at kit, did a few hundred metres together at Oceans and today he bought me a jager celebrating my first.

I never thought I’d be a “club runner”, but now I get it. Everyone runs for their own reasons; it really can be the loneliest of pursuits plodding on the road. Solitude has its place but it’s so much easier when you’re in company suffering together. I might not even do another Comrades, but I’ll definitely stay a club member. A FHACing proud one too.