Comrades

Sipping on a gin and tonic on the flight down to Istanbul, I finally got around to listen to the new Strava podcast about the Comrades ultra marathon. Going back to 1921, Comrades is a 89 km race between Durban and ‎Pietermaritzburg‎ in South Africa. The direction of the race alternates every year so there is an “up” and “down” year respectively. With a strict cut-off time of twelve hours, just completing the race is obviously a great achievement.

The first time I heard about Comrades was at work where I have a very cool colleague who has been running all kinds of races over the years, including Comrades. It is a bit funny but I can still remember when I was just getting to know her and she told me about a mountain marathon that she had been running during the summer. At the time, I was not at all into the sport and I think my reaction was one of curious disbelief about the whole concept of a “mountain marathon”. Little did I know that I, only a few years later, would have run my first ultra and be dreaming of running Comrades myself...