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, especially after reading about it in Adharanand Finn's incredible The Rise of the Ultra Runners...