COMRADES Marathon: Metaphor For The Marathon Of Life
The greatest long-distance marathon in the world, billed today as - The Ultimate Human Race - provides some excellent clues to meeting life’s challenges
First published 1998 by author: Trevor Nel
(LinkedIn article preface to original 1998 article) Watching this year’s Comrades Marathon (2003) got my juices flowing all over again. I must admit that the 5:30 a.m. start (for the first-time ever in the race's history) threw my T.V. schedule out… but I just caught the first 7 South Africans crossing the line to claim their Gold Medals. It reminded me of one of the most exciting Comrades races (original article follows):
The year, 1998… and it’s 8:30 p.m, on the eve of the greatest long-distance marathon in the world, as I tuck myself into a warm bed looking forward to the 6:00 a.m. start outside the Durban City Hall.
My mind slips into alpha-state picturing the 13000+ runners vigorously rubbing their hands and thighs in the fresh early-morning winter air. Some are covered in plastic rubbish-bags, others in old tracksuits and jerseys, to ward off the chill. All to be thrown away in the first three kilometres of the 90 kilometre Comrades Marathon.
Then suddenly, the starter’s gun fires and the jam-packed crowd pushes forward.
But, I’m in a panic. I can’t get out of the blanket I’ve got wrapped around my body. It seems to be stuck to my legs. Why can’t I get it off?
There go the last runners off in the distance. I’m still stuck! A sea of plastic bags and old jerseys are all that’s left in the road - and me!
I’m beginning to break out in a cold sweat. And, with one final heave I rip the blankets off my legs…
“What are you doing..?” asks someone with astonishment.
“Huh”, I reply, as I look to my left at my wife with goosebumps on her arms and legs.
I look to my right at the bedside clock that I was sure I had set for 6:00 a.m. I can’t believe it! It shows that the time is 7:30 a.m. I’ve missed the start of the 1998 Comrades Marathon.... on T.V.!
Phew, what a relief! I was having a nightmare, and I had just kicked the blankets off my wife and I on one of the coldest Johannesburg mornings of the year.
Rescuing the blankets, I switched on the T.V. to see a runner called Jantjies running up Fields Hill with a five minute lead on the next runner.
Who is Jantjies..? Am I still dreaming?
Rubbing the sleep out of my eyes and clearing the fuzz out of my mind I began to remember the dread of almost every Comrades runner - sleeping through the start!
For ten years I had experienced what every single one of the 1998 runners had experienced in getting to the start of this great event.
And, you know, it is just like life.
After all, to become a Comrades runner, one has to have a dream.
To many it begins as an incredible, almost impossible, dream.
Some get stimulated by great T.V. coverage of the triumph and glory experienced by each runner as they cross the finish line... others take impossible bets in pubs... and some get encouraged by their local running club to run a bit further than their weekly 5 to 8 kilometre club run.
My first taste began by default - a rugby practice that was rained out led to my joining some runners jogging around a hockey field, just to add to my stamina training.
They told me that they were winding down their training for a 42 kilometre standard marathon.
Listening to their running ‘war’ stories I became quite intrigued and accepted their invite to join them on their race on the following Sunday.
To my surprise I finished this 42 km. marathon in exactly 4 hours - never before having run further than 2.5 kilometres.
In those days, with so few runners, it was not necessary to qualify for Comrades with a set number of races under your belt. Anybody who was crazy enough could enter, besides with my time I was an automatic entry, and the dream to finish my first Comrades began.
And thus came the first of my Comrades running lessons because... for the next week I couldn’t walk normally, and two toe-nails came adrift from my bruised toes. I couldn’t run comfortably for two weeks!
I soon came to learn that to have a dream is just the beginning of the challenge in life. The next critical step is to prepare to achieve one’s dream.
I also became all too aware that achieving one’s dream is likely to come with a certain amount of pain
Preparation?- this is the key to every successful Comrades finisher making it to the end in relative comfort - minus a few toe-nails, of course.
For most, the race begins in mid-January to early-February. It is now well-accepted that a healthy novice runner can reach Comrades capability with a simple 90 to 120 day training program.
That is, from running 3 to 5 kilometres to completing a 90-kilometre marathon in under 11 hours. But it takes planning and preparation to stretch your runs to 10 kilometres, then to 21, to 30, on to a 42 kilometre standard marathon, and up to a 56 kilometre ultra-marathon.
The secret to success and achievement in life is preparing yourself for success and achievement. If you don’t think that this is important then try running a 42 km. standard marathon with no training... and give me a call to tell me how you feel.
But Comrades gives us an even more important clue to preparing for success… your preparation needs to be specific to the success or dream you wish to achieve.
It is no good spending 120 days preparing for Comrades by running 10 hundred metre sprints a day.
And, don’t think that you can achieve significant dreams on natural ability alone.
Ask our mysterious Mr. Jantjies who led the 1998 Comrades to half-way and then bailed out.
As beautifully as he ran for half of the race, the fact is that he failed to achieve his dream of finishing Comrades because he had not prepared for or planned his race correctly.
Isn’t this just like life?
We see people who say they want to be successful in achieving their dreams in their lives, but they spend all their time on activities and information-gathering that has nothing to with achieving their dreams.
If you want to be a leading astronomer don’t spend all your time reading runners magazines.
If you want to be a wealthy stock-market investor don’t spend your time reading love stories.
The key to quality preparation and planning to achieve your dreams is to focus your information-gathering and activities around that dream.
As I watched the replay of the start of the 1998 race the thought struck me that all the preparation and planning for these runners would have meant nothing if they had not got to the start and kicked off into action.
Too many people in life spend a lot of time planning and preparing for success, but they never ever start anything to get them on the way to achieving their dreams.
To achieve your dreams in life means taking some action to get you closer to your dream.
But, if you think it’s that easy to be successful, think again!
My everlasting memory of my ten Comrades marathons is of hills, hills and more hills!
It is not for nothing that the Comrades route is known internationally as the Valley of a Thousand Hills.
For most dreams to be achieved in life we need to realise that, like Comrades, life is tough!
It’s full of ups, and downs!
The route to success and achievement is never plain sailing.
In Comrades, the ups are hard on your thighs, and the downs kill your knees.
Just to participate involves a fair amount of pain.
In life the ups take extra hard work, and the downs can cause pain in your pocket or to your psyche if you take it too easy.
I learnt, from my very first Comrades, that the secret to achieving your dreams is to just keep putting one foot in front of the other.
To keep on keeping on!
To hang in and keep moving forward to your objective. No matter how painful your feet might be or how tired you feel physically or mentally, the trick is to keep moving.
For some strange reason, if you stop, your legs and body just seize up and you can’t get moving again.
I’ve noticed that this same phenomenon happens in life.
We have a dream, we put it into action, we hit a down, we can’t see the finish, and our minds tell us to sit down and give up.
Don’t! Or your dream will end on the side of the road of life.
Athletes talk of this as running through the pain-barrier. Every sportsman knows that incredible feeling of a second-wind when you break through your own pain-barrier.
In Comrades you can reach your ‘fourth’-wind and, even a ‘fifth’-wind.
In life, you are going to hit hundreds, if not thousands, of personal pain-barriers. You can sit down and seize up, or keep on keeping on!
It’s more rewarding just to keep putting one foot in front of the other. Don’t give up - ever!
My case in point is that of Nick Bester, a previous Comrades winner, and one of the favourites for the 1998 Comrades.
Bester spent six months in high-altitude training in the hills around Dullstroom with the aim of achieving another win in the race. Unfortunately for Nick his preparation was set back with troublesome injuries.
Nevertheless he entered the day as one of the three pre-race favourites. At the three-quarter way mark it became clear that Nick was not in the race with the front-runners, and news came from the course that he was not feeling well.
Yet, Nick kept putting one foot in front of the other and finished Comrades in 17th position... despite not feeling well!
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Isn’t that just like life?
You spend all that time in preparation and planning to reach a dream and something beyond your control appears out of the blue to create an added difficulty.
Sometimes we have no control over the circumstances that unfold around us.
But we do have control over the way we choose to respond to those circumstances!
Nick’s attitude was great, he just kept on keeping on.
In his post-race interview he admitted to being disappointed at his performance but extremely happy to have finished the race.
The first satisfaction in life comes from completing one’s chosen task.
Thereafter, the quality of one’s performance enhances the level of personal satisfaction.
This brings us to the most perplexing challenge of life.
What happens when a group of people all have the same dream in life - to win the 1998 Comrades Marathon?
Well, watching Charl Matheus and Dimitri Grishen tussling it out on the way to Polly Shorts, I could only marvel at their commitment to their preparation and planning.
Matheus had spent six months in the mountains in America, and Grishen spent the same time at high-altitude in Russia.
The sad thing about life is that despite all their exceptional hard work, only one of them would win the race at the end of the day.
One of them was destined for disappointment.
And that happened to be Charl Matheus who came in an admirable second to a record-breaking run by Dimitri.
But, Charl’s comment was the ultimate clue to living a successful life when he said, “Dimitri was better than me on the day, but I’m happy that I gave it my best shot.”
And, did he ever. Charl set the pace for one of the finest runs yet seen in Comrades.
For me, this highlights the danger of calling people ‘winners and losers’ in life.
Anyone who witnessed Charl’s performance over the day could not, by any stretch of the imagination, label him as a ‘loser’.
Neither could you label any one of the 10000+ runners who crossed the finish-line in under the 11 hour cut-off time as ‘a loser’.
I believe that life is not to be measured by whether we ‘win’ or ‘lose’, but rather by whether we achieve completion of the tasks that we set out to do.
Society is perhaps best divided into ‘achievers and non-achievers’ rather than into ‘winners and losers’.
And only we, ourselves, can judge whether we’ve given each task our best shot or not.
Perhaps the supreme example of this attitude in action was displayed by Rae Bischoff, the 44 year-old veteran and winner of the ladies race.
Rae led the race from start to finish with the TV cameras focused on her all the way.
I noticed that Rae had a dead-pan look on her face the entire way. She didn’t talk to anybody, she didn’t smile, she didn’t acknowledge anybody. She didn’t even sneak a backward glance when the second-placed lady caught up to within 20 seconds of her with less than one kilometre to go.
At the end of the race the TV commentator asked her how she felt when she knew that the second-placed lady was closing in on her.
Rae’s answer: “I didn’t know she was there, besides I don’t run against others, I’m not interested in what they are doing. I just do the best I can do and accept the result!”
What a fantastic event..!
What a great day..!
What a powerful metaphor for life!
Every Comrades day I savor the rewards of achieving my dream.
And that little dream began on my first Comrades Marathon in 1978 when I ran past the Botha’s Hill regulars - old Comrades runners with their green numbers awarded for completing ten Comrades - who each year toast the runners from their jovial champagne breakfast on the side of the road.
They wave their precious green numbers to show some of the arrogant first-timers that they indeed deserve their champagne breakfast outing reward and are not just run-of-the-mill arm-chair critics passing crass comments.
They are members of a special club. The Green Number club!
Well, my little dream, there and then, extended from the dream of finishing my first Comrades to becoming a member of that special club with the privilege of sitting back to a champagne breakfast and watching the race unfold before me.
Ten years later, I achieved that dream just by putting one foot in front of the other.
Today, I celebrate my tenth sumptuous Comrades champagne breakfast with my family as I watch these thousands of achievers on the way to achieving one of their own personal dreams.
The greatest enjoyment in life comes from the rewards you give to yourself for your little achievements.
With each sip of champagne I contemplate the amazing fact that 13000+ runners are now starting this great long-distance marathon each year, but I temper my astonishment with the calculation that this number represents less than .03% of our entire population attempting this unique challenge each year.
What are the other 99.97% of our population doing with their lives on this day.
Hopefully they’re dreaming, planning, preparing, taking action, overcoming obstacles, running through the pain, and savoring the satisfaction of completing their tasks to the best of their abilities.
Yes, Comrades is tough.
Life is tough!
But when you tackle it with gusto, the satisfaction that comes from achieving your own personal dream is the greatest feeling on earth!
Enjoy your life!
Points To Ponder
1.) One has to prepare to achieve one’s dreams.
2.) Preparation has to be specific for the task at hand.
3.) It takes action to achieve one’s dreams.
4.) Life is full of ups and downs.
5.) The secret to success is putting one foot in front of the other… to keep on keeping on.
6.) ‘I do the best I can do and accept the result!’
Action Program
If you are physically able… set yourself a little challenge to go and get a medal. Get on some running shoes… or get onto a bike… and get to a fun run or ride where they dish out medals to finishers and do something that you have never done before.
Do 5 kilometres… or do 10 kilometres… build it up to 21kms… then 30… then 42. Do that… and you will finish Comrades over 90 kilometres. The Comrades organisers have added an extra hour… giving you 12 hours to complete it.
Ends.
Regards
Trevor
Trevor Nel
CEO
FOURWAYS Community Chamber of Commerce
SMS/WhatsApp: 084?332-4421
Marketing Director & Coach | Talking about Mindset, Marketing & Mastery
4 年Interesting read, reminds me of my first kickboxing tournament i didn't sleep the night before. Second time i prepared a little more specifically for the task at hand. Learning from the first time slept like a baby, i won and beat my senior and previous trainer. I love to compete. Now mostly in the mind ;) You still swimming?