Dare To Dream: Embracing Bronze

Just over ten days later and hopefully the dust has settled on the treacherous route between KZN’s political capital and its tourist mecca. Indeed, as participants of The Ultimate Human Race, we’ve had adequate time to heal physically and otherwise; I had no blisters or damaged toenails this year.

What remains though, are the deep-set scars of disappointment, mainly for missing Plan A, in my case.

The Encrypted Dream

As depicted on the screenshot above, Plan A was to attempt a pace of 6:32/km for 90.184km. Had the plan worked, this should have given me a finish time of 09h49m, which would have meant a reduction of two hours from my two previous Comrades times.

The Distant Dream

Well, that was not to be! There are many factors that made the naive plan fail – too technical to dwell on right now. Coming in at 10h06m, I only managed to reduce my two previous times by 1h43m; the actual target missed by a moerse 17 minutes.

I was broken!

Well, that’s over now. As Tupac says, “Life goes on“. It’s time to move on to other things. Indeed, there was a time when I would never have thought I can survive 500m of running. So, I’ll celebrate my 10h06 like what I am, The Most Unlikely Runner. He whose mere presence on the road defies logic. Nothing about my build or frame is athletic (Ka fosta nje).

Except for my mind, maybe. Not only has my mind been toughened by childhood struggles, but also by the raw desire to be worth something. To rise from the obscurity of being a dismissable nobody to being a recognisable somebody. Today, when they tell my story they’ll say: “We don’t understand how he finished the first two editions, but we definitely don’t believe he did a 10h06. No, not him.”

I have proven to myself that I can drive at least one aspect of me to a specific goal if I crave it hard enough. And though I did not achieve my C18 Plan A, I would know exactly what to do to overcome it next year, but that is over now – gone. There is so much more to do with my running life than Comrades.

There’s still the Great Wall of China Marathon, the 100km Pharaonic Race across the hot arid Egyptian desert, the North Pole Marathon (among polar bears), and many other suicidal road races. Of course, my eyes are also set on completing all six Abbott World Marathon Majors. All these ahead of caring about getting my green number, hopefully before I die.

Exceptions for my return to Comrades will be, among others, the following:

• Pacing my wife to her first Comrades finish;
• Anniversary Editions, especially 95th and 100th; and
• Winning the damn thing in 2024. 🙂 🙂 🙂 🙂 🙂

Till next time, “Happy Running”!