Category: News

Join the friendly, free 8am Saturday morning 5km in your area!

parkrunner Q&A
Peter Hawthorne
Ebotse parkrun, Benoni

How did you get into parkruns?
“Ebotse was the third SA event started back in 2012. I saw a note in the local newspaper and thought it would be interesting. I was running essentially the same course already, but doing it alone. I must be the luckiest parkrunner in SA, as the start is only 500m from my house.”

Have you run any other parkruns besides Ebotse?
“Yes, I’ve run two in the UK and 22 in South Africa so far, and to date I’ve done 77 in total. I’ve been running regularly since 1985, but I can’t remember the other things I used to do on Saturday mornings that were so important before I started parkrun! The reason I have done so many of the parkruns in SA is that we have a motor home, bought originally to spend days overlooking waterholes in Kruger and other parks, but one winter we ran away to the coast to avoid the Highveld cold. Then along came parkrun, which gave us another reason to spend time at the coast, and I started to ‘collect’ runs.”

What do you think of the sense of community at parkruns?
“It’s fun to meet different people at different events – they’re all there for the same purpose, to enjoy the running, the surroundings and each other’s company.”

parkrun in your area

North Beach, Durban
Twitter: @NBparkrun
Facebook: NorthBeachparkrun

Every Saturday morning, hundreds of enthusiastic parkrunners gather outside the Suncoast Casino for their weekly 5km alongside the pristine Durban coast. The course takes you down the promenade alongside the ocean, past the smiling faces of our resident sand artists with their beautiful works of beach art, then on past bustling restaurants and paddling pools until you reach a familiar face waiting at halfway with a smile and word of encouragement. The last kay greets you with some welcomed shade provided by rows of exotic bush and palm trees until cheering volunteers bring you into the finish.

Durban humidity is not for the faint-hearted, but the views and friendly faces on the promenade make up for it! Durban’s warm winters also make it easy to get up and put your running shoes on. There are ample drinking taps along the route, and plenty of restaurants and cafés for a post-parkrun coffee and breakfast.

With free parking offered to parkrunners in the Suncoast Casino parking lot, finding a safe place for your car is a breeze. The course is flat and unchallenging, serving as the perfect time trial for the more competitive runner, or an enjoyable stroll for those out to enjoy some sun and a chat with friends. So join us! – Rox Lewis

Parkrun SA Stats

Number of parkruns: 26
Number of events: 1146
Number of active runners: 38 124
Number of individual runs: 172 683
Total distance covered: 863 415km
Total run time: 12 years, 342 days, 14 hours, 9 minutes, 55 seconds
*Last updated 18 March

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Go to www.parkrun.co.za to find your nearest parkrun and to register for free. Just a simple contact form and voila, you’re good to go! OR follow parkrun on Facebook: parkrunSouthAfrica or Twitter: @parkrunSA

parkrun PARTNER!
Modern Athlete is proud to be an official partner of parkrun SA. Each month in the magazine, you’ll get all the parkrun news, info and updates, plus all registered parkrun members will receive a FREE Modern Athlete digi-mag each month!

The April edition of Modern Athlete is charging through the presses like an elite athlete after the record bonus at Oceans! Great news is that if you are doing Oceans you will be receiving your Modern Athlete in your Oceans Goody Bag. We'll also be carrying a stock at the Expo for all locals and visitors – so do pop around and say hi and pick up your April edition.

To get first glimpse of the mag, ensure you are on a Digi-Mag subscriber list. Signing up is easy – just visit go to here and follow the “Subscribe to our Digi-Mag” link. Pop us your name and email and you're done!

 

The 2014 World Half Marathon Championships take place in Copenhagen on Saturday. The Kenyans are once again expected to dominate, having picked up five individual wins over the last 20 years as well as eight team victories. The fast and flat course in the Danish capital could play into the hands of Lucy Wangui Kabuu, who ran a personal best 1:06.09 in Ras Al Khaimah in 2013 which made her the fastest woman on a record legal half-marathon course last year and that time put her joint sixth on the all-time listings.

Someone else who is hoping for a half marathon pb this weekend is South Africa’s Rene Kalmer. Currently the Olympian’s half marathon best is 1:10.13 and she is aiming to break 70 minutes for the first time in Denmark at the weekend. It was also announced this week that Kalmer has joined the Modern Athlete ranks and when she next runs it will be in the colours of Modern Athlete. Kalmer caught up with Brad Brown on Run Talk SA this week and you can listen to that chat by pressing the play button below.
 

Hein Wagner, blind adventurer and motivational speaker, has successfully completed the extreme Antarctic Marathon on the South Pole. On March, 9th 2014 Wagner completed what has been colloquially described as the harshest marathon on the planet. Nick Kruiskamp, well-respected athlete and race champion, was Wagner’s guide. This is the first time in the history of the 15-year-old event that a blind person has finished the gruelling race.

“I always knew the Antarctica Marathon would be a test of endurance, mental strength and perseverance. However, I never thought that being on the 7th continent surrounded by ice capped mountains, glaciers, icebergs, snow, penguins, whales and other wildlife will be so emotionally overwhelming,” says Wagner.

As expected, the treacherous race covered the most rugged terrain, made of mud, ice and sludge. Wagner describes his perilous start of the race: “Within a few minutes we tracked through the first bit of snow followed by loads of mud. This quickly turned into a series of small water streams and although we tried to jump over them, they pulled me in to the very centre of their icy cold. My mind was racing ahead to frostbite and amputations when I told myself to snap out of it; motivating myself by realising that it was just the beginning, so I forced myself to focus.”

“In a brutally honest way Antarctica reflects the ever dramatically changing world we live in as no 5 minutes down there are the same. A beautiful sunny morning at zero degrees can very quickly change into a snowy ice wind and rain with a chill factor of minus 15 to minus 25 degrees. I’ve never experienced anything colder than Antarctica. It had me shaking to my very core!”

Wagner refuses to stand back from a challenge. Despite this blindness, Wagner has a string of accomplishments to his name. Wagner is an avid sportsman and enjoys abseiling, running and cycling; he has won the World Cup Cricket for the Blind, sailed the Cape-to-Rio yacht race, completed the gruelling Ironman triathlon and finished the legendary eight-day stage Absa Cape Epic mountain biking race. Wagner is also the current holder of the land speed record for a blind driver at 322.52 km/h.

“Since I can remember, I’ve had a fascination with the North and the South Pole and when Mike Bailey, my runner guide, came up with the idea to enter the Antarctica marathon I jumped at the chance! Unfortunately, Bailey was forced to drop out of the race due to a serious knee injury. “I only met my new running partner, Nick Kruiskamp, a week before the race. This left me a little nervous. I knew guiding a blind person for the first time, through the toughest marathon on the planet, was not going to be easy. After a few cold beers in Buenos Aires I realised Nick and I will definitely find our rhythm!”

Wagner participated in the event to promote the abilities of those living with disabilities and to raise the profile of VisionTrust, an organisation dedicated to making the world more accessible to the blind. “After receiving the honour of running with race number 1, I knew that no matter what I have to finish the race and do so in a respectable time. I do not take representing blindness lightly. Wagner reached his goal to raise enough money to provide 20 previously disadvantaged, unsighted individuals with specialised computers and software to help them lead a normal live.

Wagner describes the most difficult thing he has had to do, was to accept his blindness unconditionally. Wagner describes how his sense of feeling was challenged in Antarctica, “I can only remember a few occasions in my life when I really yearned to see. Waking up to whales playing in the water, seals sun-bathing on floating icebergs and the backdrop made up of pristine, beautiful and breath-taking glaciers left me a little envious of the sighted. It wasn’t easy, but then I started looking at it from a different perspective. I believe this was my true test of endurance and to my surprise the pristine beauty of the 7th continent is so extreme it turned out that I could actually hear the view.”