Festival of Running Marathon (Earning your Easter eggs)

[MARATHON #264 / UNIQUE MARATHON #160 / 29 March 2024]

After Two Oceans moved away from their traditional Easter timeslot, a vacuum appeared on the marathon running calendar. Fortunately, this year two races stepped in to ensure that the Easter weekend is not ‘all eggs and no legs’. You could either run the City to City (back after a long absence) in Gauteng on Easter Sunday or the inaugural Festival of Running (FoR) Marathon in Gqeberha (PE) on Good Friday (or if you are Julian Karp you could run both).

I decided to turn Good Friday into a great Friday with a trip to the Eastern Cape. I was particularly interested in the FoR Marathon as it was billed as the first 100% plastic free marathon in South Africa and also had the novelty of an afternoon start (the only other non-morning marathon in South Africa is the Ottosdal Nite Marathon). This allowed for a same day marathon sandwich with an 8:00am flight out of Joburg and an 8:00pm flight back home.

I originally thought that I would be flying solo as Julian sent me a “Pity to miss this but the flights are too expensive” message. A few days later he sent me, “I am getting FOMO on the Friday marathon – please forward your flight details and I will see what I can do.” This communication saga was concluded shortly thereafter with, “I’ve booked my flights. You are a bad influence on me Mr. Mann”.

Bridget from Old Eds was also added to the touring party. Bridget was looking for a marathon to qualify for Comrades. Bridget is a good example of why you need to read the fine print before tagging along with any of Julian’s plans. The FoR Marathon is undoubtably one of the hilliest, nastiest, most brutal marathons out there. It’s a lovely marathon but anyone trying to use it as a qualifier is insane. But we’ll get to the course profile later.

The start is about a 30 minutes’ drive from the airport and we arrived in good time to be one of the first to register under the shade of a tree at a municipal picnic spot. There was plenty of time for a late breakfast / early lunch at a quaint coffee shop across the road as well as some photo ops with the local drinking brigade who were very excited to photo bomb our pre-race photo (they were also more than happy to share their Old Brown Sherry but I declined their kind offer).

I am normally a “just in time” to the start line runner but the 1pm start allowed the luxury of leisurely race preparation. If you were looking to ‘lose weight while you wait’ or just wanted a quiet spot to sit and reflect on the marathon ahead, you could spend a few minutes in one of these saunas below. A session inside one of these plastic throne rooms in the heat of the midday sun is a special experience (although I’d recommend getting the job done before anyone else has a chance to work up a sweat).

With the race being completely plastic free (other than the pre-race saunas), instead of the traditional tape, some sand from the side of the road was repurposed for a start line. Luckily it was a still day in the Windy City or we might have had trouble finding the start!

We were told to bring our own bottles. Julian opted for a regular store-bought bottle whilst the environmental aficionados followed the race’s recommendation of a collapsible cup (which range from R20 to R300+ depending on your budget). I of course opted to bring out the pewter beer mug I got at my 21^st birthday for its maiden marathon.

I figured that since it would be well into beer drinking time by the time I finished the marathon, I might as well make the most of the situation and do the next best thing to drinking a beer on the coastline by drinking one of the four core ingredients of beer out of a quality drinking vessel along the coastline.

In hindsight, this was not the most practical option as I quickly discovered that I cannot even walk and drink water out of that mug without spilling (and I also had bruised knuckles the next day). All the media attention is focussed on the dangers of drinking and driving but the risk of spillage is far greater if you try to drink and run. Not wanting to write about ‘The Good Friday Beer Tragedy’, I refrained from having anything other than pure H20 in the mug until finishing.

The race is designed as a Comrades / 100 mile training run (Comrades is just a training run for the Washie in this part of the world and the race founder is ‘one of those people’ who routinely runs 100 milers). It includes the roughest and toughest hills you can find around PE on top of the challenge of running in the heat of the day so that your body can get acclimatised to afternoon running.

It all starts sedately enough with a gentle decline known as the “Mother-in-law” before you go down on the Three Sisters. On a windless day in PE, life was breezy until the 9km mark. It’s here that you meet Maitlands Hill which takes you from 0 to 100 metres above sea level over two kilometres. However you are still fresh enough so that the climb can be easily negotiated and the reward of a stunning ocean vista can be savoured.

After this is a two kilometres back down Maitland Hill and then 2.5km of flat where the most notable landmark was Barnacles pub and restaurant where I jealously looked up at the pack veranda of people enjoying some afternoon beers with a sea view.

By this time the people of PE have lost creativity and have run out of imaginative names for their hills because the next hill, which is at least six kilometres long, is known as 5k hill. However, to get to start of 5k hill you do have to first run up another nameless hill which is one kilometre long. So we did seven kilometres of solid climbing from just 14km to the halfway mark and it wasn’t long before the refreshing sea breeze was replaced by the stifling late afternoon heat.

At some point on this endless uphill, I thought we’d been given a reprieve as we veered right onto a downhill. However, my fellow runners informed me that the only reason for detouring off 5k hill was so that we could get acquainted with ‘The Wall’. There are a few things I’ve learned over two decades of running and one of them is that the name ‘The Wall’ is usually reserved for the most vicious hill in a metropole and actually physically running into a brick wall is usually more fun than running up a hill called ‘The Wall’.

Nelson Mandela Bay’s contribution to ‘The Wall’ lexicon did not disappoint. I was not actually planning to run up ‘The Wall’ until I saw a cyclist struggling up the hill in front of me. With a burst of energy I surged past the peddler and braggingly offered, “Do you need a push?” He replied with something unrepeatable (if we were in Cape Town it would have been something like “Joe ma se push”) but then I couldn’t lose face and realised that I would have to run all the way to the top.

The out-and-back route is designed in such a way that you arrive back almost at the start and then loop back home the way you came. The half marathon mark had the only table with Coke in addition to water. You’re never too old or too experienced to learn something new. This is the marathon where I found out that it’s easy enough to run without water sachets but running a marathon whilst sugar deprived is another story*.

* The organisers are looking at ways to bring in plastic free sugar options next year.

I greedily glugged down as much Coca-Cola as my stomach could handle and headed back the way we came. We ran through the half marathoners who were waiting for their 3:30pm start. They run the back half of the marathon route and it wasn’t long before the speedsters were hungrily hunting us down and started zooming past us on the downhill back to the coast.

You now get to enjoy a 6km slide back down 5k Hill back down to the coastline (although Strava shows we climbed 7km up you only get 6km back down – I still don’t know how the organisers achieved this). The coastline is a beautiful sight under the late afternoon sun but the aesthetic appeal is somewhat tempered with the knowledge that you are back at sea level and the lowest point of the route.

Whilst the coastline remains beautiful as the day wears on, the ugly spectre of the Maitland Hill looms large just after the 30km mark. When everyone was still chatty and full of hope at the beginning of the run, local runners had explained all the hills to me. I thought this was ‘Mother-in-Law’ hill but it turns out that comes later. I would however suggest a renaming of this climb to be the ‘Evil Mother-in-Law’ hill as this malicious bitch will give you two solid kilometres of hell. An alternate naming suggestion ‘Mother Flipper’ as you can then use the excuse that it took you so long to summit because you were whale watching.

Speaking of which, the race logo features a bottle-nosed dolphin and this stretch along the rugged coastline provides excellent sightings of marine life in Algoa Bay. However, the organisers were so intent on having a plastic-free run that unfortunately they even made sure that the bottle-nosed dolphins stayed away on race day.

The downside of reaching the top of the hill (pun intended) is that the next two kilometres back to sea level are the final real downhill of the day. The last section of this race has no mercy.

We’re now at the 34km mark. We’re back at sea level and the sun is low in the sky. To earn your finish you are facing 8km of steady, relentless climbing. It is at this point in the race that one asks the question, “What kind of sick, twisted, sadistic bastard organises a marathon like this on the start of a 4-day long weekend?”

The answer short answer is “Steven Lancaster”. The longer answer follows…

Steven is an accomplished mountaineer. He routinely puts on a backpack and disappears into the mountains with just his thoughts and the thin air for company. Unfortunately his thoughts (aided and abetted by the thin mountain air) seem to focus on plotting ferocious marathon routes. His exploits have even earned him a climbing route in the Van Stadens Gorge named after him. Aside from regularly running 100 milers, he has also completed two ‘Everestings’.

What is an ‘Everesting’ you might ask: You pick a long hill and then run up it as many times as it takes to get to a total elevation gain of 8849m – the height of Mount Everest. His first was in 2021 to raise money for workplace training for youths as well as plant 600 trees and was achieved with 168 ascents of Brickmakers Kloof in Nelson Mandela Bay. However, he took the ‘soft’ option here. Volkswagen were one of the sponsors and they gave him 167 lifts back down the hill. However, for his second Everesting he did it entirely unassisted with 37 sleepless hours going up and down the Lady’s Slipper Mountain 32 times.

Aside from the beautiful coastal running, the race provides some epic views of the magnificent Maitlands dune fields and the fore mentioned Lady’s Slipper Mountain (which is the highest point in the Metro as well as the end of the Cape Fold Mountain Ranges that begin northeast of Cape Town). However, I can say with 100% certainty that no one was appreciating the stunning scenery or sunset at this stage of the race. Everyone was shoegazing as they slowly plodded up the hill. Heavy breathing drowned out the sounds of the waves crashing behind us and the orchestra of evening insects around us.

With Easter being an important religious holiday, I can confirm that the climb over the last 8km brought many people closer to God. Whilst some wondered whether today was the day they’d get to meet their maker, others offered up prayers to their chosen deity pleading for the hill to come to an end. With the race start line being drawn using dirt from the side of the road, a 1pm start in the heat of the day and a course so hilly that you are guaranteed to get badly burnt, this route is best described as a case of, “Ashes to ashes, dust to dusk.”

As for me, I had my own religious experience when I spotted the sign below. In the Bible, Peter is told he will disown Jesus three times before the cock crows at sunrise on Good Friday. Luckily roosters don’t crow at sunset because, on Good Friday 2024, I was ready to disown marathon running over these final kilometres.

Fortunately, I had one thing keeping me going: Beer. Safe in the knowledge that I had a coolerbox full of ice-cold beer waiting for me at the finish line, my empty beer mug acted as a magnet and pulled me up the final climb to the finish. With the race being plastic free and as waste efficient as possible, you can choose whether you want to top up the really cheap entry fee of R130 with an extra R30 for a medal. In addition, all runners do a get an edible, easter egg ‘medal’ after crossing the finish line. I was so sugar deprived that mine disappeared in one gulp.

Whilst running with a beer stein is not recommend (and left my knuckles in a rather battered and bruised state), my choice of environmentally friendly refillable vessel did work fantastically well after finishing. Having given my mug a solid rinsing with water for the better part of five hours, I was delighted to finally be able to pour a beer into it. As you can see from the GIF below, this the 100% guaranteed surefire way to get the smile back on my face after a tough marathon.

With 847m of elevation, I make this the toughest coastal marathon in the country. But sometimes the stats don’t tell the full story. Just how tough is this marathon? Julian Karp, who prides himself in never ever walking, begrudgingly admitted that he “had to walk about 80 metres at one point”. This route is vicious. This route is nasty. This route is brutal. It’s also the best and most beautiful marathon I’ve run so far this year.

Afterword

Below are a couple of questions and answers on organising a plastic-free race that might be of interest.

Question: Can you give me a bit of information about holding a plastic-free race, i.e. why this is important to you?

1. Various bodies talk about “using less plastic”. Very few actually do the work. To my knowledge not one athlete has been disqualified for littering. So, we have to talk about a different kind of leadership to create change in our habits. And most people agree we DO need to use less plastic.
2. Creating events where “time wastage” is not an issue becomes important to help adjust thinking.
3. If people don’t have an option, then corrective action is not only easier, it is the standard.
4. When events like this operate, then other event organizers see that it is not only possible, but also desirable.
5. We begged, borrowed and bought tanks to supply water on route for this event. Hopefully our water supplier will get more demand, and therefore begin to offer this service in future.

Question: What advice do you have for other race organisers who want to go plastic-free or reduced plastic?

1. Start organizing early! Communicate that you’re offering refill stations early!
2. If the route is a fast route, ask on public forums “are you going for a PB?” And make it clear that if the answer is “no”, then it will be expected that you’re not using single-use plastic, but rather running with a cup or a bottle.
3. We don’t recommend runners run with a beer stein, although that makes a phenomenal story… and thank you!!
4. We recommend a collapsible cup or bottle. They can range in price from R20-ish to R300+ depending on brand and your desire!

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