| | | |  | | Tanya Caldwell's journey to the 2010 Comrades | | | (The little ones waiting...)
On the 30 May 2010 I found myself packed into a holding pen with thousands of other hopeful novice Comrades runners. As we fidgeted with our equipment, swapped stories of our rigorous training programs, compared note on distances run, I was struck by how diverse the crowd pressing round me was and yet how comfortingly familiar and just like me they all were. Ordinary people united by our common love of long distance road running and the extraordinary goal of running the world’s greatest ultra.
Two years earlier Hildagonda Brewer, manager of the Craighall branch of Run Walk for Life had taken me under her tiny but very determined wing and before I knew it I had progressed from puffing round a field to running my first 5km race. Many medals later (I really love medals!) I found myself training for my first half-marathon, then a marathon and against all reason entered into Comrades 2010!
It was then that the serious business began…
Our tiny training team consisted of Hildagonda Brewer, our coach, myself and another member of our branch, Nadia Coetzee. If truth be known, Nadia was largely responsible for me joining the team since helping her prepare for her first ultra earlier in the year had stirred my competitive spirit…although deep down I never really intended to run Comrades, not really…
Qualifying at Johnson Crane was the turning point. What a race that was. I squeaked in just within the necessary time but my body felt like a well oiled machine. My mind reasoned that if I had done the qualifying time then Comrades was an achievable goal and that was it, I was hooked.
The training was hard. To minimize the disruption to our young families the bulk of our training took place between 04h00 and 06h00 during the week so we could rush home to get little ones dressed and fed and off to school before our own work days started. Sunday mornings accommodated the longer runs that stretched into many hours on the road together.
Hildagonda kept a close watch on our progress, pushing us to each new level of the training program, always on hand to dispense remedies, advice, new ideas and strategies as well as motherly concern and a shoulder to lean on. When a suspected stress fracture nearly took me out of the running, I realized just now much of myself I had invested in this journey and how much I wanted to stand on that start line.
So here we are, us three, packed into the Comrades 2010 H-Group holding pen. I am terrified and elated, fighting back tears with the welling emotion of the National Anthem and Chariots of Fire, the cock crow and the cannon…
They say that it is the shortest day of your life – a battle against the clock – particularly if like me one is aiming for an 11h45 finish. It was a short day, but it was also a day full of so many different and new experiences, physical challenges, emotional highs and lows: an overwhelming sense of being part of a bigger community juxtaposed with the certain knowledge that one is very much alone. They caution us novices about the stretch after 60km where the body must be driven on by the mind…It was in this stretch before passing the 18km to go cut off that I lost 30mins and the determination to push on at a pace that would guarantee me a finish and a medal.
With 10km left to go I climbed into the bailer bus – they sweep the route like angels of death, tempting the weary! Actually, I flagged my bus down and as the blasting heaters from the bus and the space blanket started to warm me I felt nothing but elation at having run 80km of Comrades and of having been part of such a amazing race.
All my life I’ve been driven by the end result, the | | | |  | | | | |  |
