Blood Buddy Ultra (The Legacy of a Schoolboy Dare)

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[MARATHON #192 / UNIQUE MARATHON #104 / 9 AUGUST 2018]

For those who weren’t stockpiling candles and canned food, the early 1990s was a period of unbridled optimism in South Africa: The times they were a changin’ and democracy was a comin’. It was in this spirit that a small group of 11 matric students from Amajuba High School and three of their teachers sat around a camp fire discussing the future.

The conversation meandered around innumerable topics until one student wondered whether it was possible to walk between the local towns of Memel (in the Free State) and Newcastle (in Kwazulu Natal). This proved an interesting topic, one thing led to another, the gauntlet was thrown down and a dare was unleashed. Continue reading “Blood Buddy Ultra (The Legacy of a Schoolboy Dare)”

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Comrades Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Run

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Comrades 2018: My Penultimate Run at the Ultimate Human Race

[MARATHON #190 / Comrades #9 / 10 June 2018]

The human brain is a complex network of neural circuits. The two most intense emotions humans can experience are ‘love’ and ‘hate’. Many people think that ‘love’ is the opposite of ‘hate’ but recent neurological studies have shown that the two are so closely related that they even run on the same neural circuits. A better opposite for both ‘love’ and ‘hate’ is apathy. Apathy is not a word one associates with running Comrades – but wild bouts of love and hate are likely to flow through the neurological pathways of one’s brain over the course of a very long day.

The scientific studies did determine one key difference: The cerebral cortex – this is the part of the brain associated with logic, judgement and reasoning – becomes largely deactivated during bouts of love but remains fully functional during hate. I am a rational, lucid and objective human being which explains why I seem to hate Comrades so much more than I love it.

In 1971 The Persuaders harmonised that, “It’s a thin line between love and hate”. At Comrades there is 90 kilometres between hate and love.

Continue reading “Comrades Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Run”

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