Knysna Forest Marathon (like father, like son)

[MARATHON #269 / Knysna Forest MARATHON #11 / 22 June 2024]

I have a long history with the Knysna Forest Marathon but it was 11 years since I had last run ‘Kringe in a bos’. Looking at the photo below, you might be wondering how I come to be in the possession of three permanent #30s.

Every winter school holiday my dad, The Old Running Mann, would drag the family down to the Garden Route to run Knysna. He was the 30th person to run 10 Knysnas and then ended up with a “Double Loerie” after his 20th. The two ‘face cloth’ size permanent numbers are his.

I started running marathons in 2002 and Knysna 2002 was my 4^th marathon. After running Two Oceans together over Easter, I flew down from Joburg to meet up with my dad and we ran Knysna together. Knysna was the first time I ever ran a race and regretted spotting each kilometre marker – it was that beautiful in the forest. The ‘hand towel’ size permanent number is mine. I inherited The Old Running Mann’s number after my 10^th run in 2013.

However, my long history with this race goes even further back as Knysna was also my first (2017) and second half marathon (2021). As a UCT student, a friend of mine called Hayden Parr and I trained up to run the half marathon which was a rite of passage for the student populace in those days. Hayden was both a reliable running and drinking partner – so much so on the latter that my parents referred to him as ‘Hayden from Hades’. However, Hayden broke his leg on the dance floor* of his own 21^st birthday party about a month before the race.

* To this day, exactly how this happened remains a mystery. One minute he was on the dancefloor busting some moves, the next he had a busted leg.

I don’t remember too much about my debut half marathon in 1997 but did finish in 1:46 which I’ll take for a good first effort and do recall being incredibly stiff and sore afterwards. At ‘The Cave’ after the race, Hayden (who diligently tagged along even though he was not able to run) and I secured the comfort of a table and then only got up to buy another round of beer or visit the loo (to make room for more beer) – preferably combining both trips at the same time.

Habits are supposed to be formed when you’re young. Whilst beer drinking certainly stuck, running did not. Immediately after completing my first half marathon I went cold turkey on any further jogging. However, four years later when I was working in Joburg and had started to resemble the Michelin man after being on cortisone for an eye infection, I entered and trained for a second Knysna – and this time the running bug stuck.

Back to the present and this dad was planning to keep up the family tradition by dragging his family down to the Garden Route for a marathon. We had a Garden Route holiday pencilled in early as the 2024 Knysna race date coincided with my daughters’ week-long winter mid-term break. However, the school timed my eldest’s exams directly after the break and she is not the kind of kid who needs any study distractions. Therefore, I flew solo into George airport (with much thanks to Race Space who covered my travel costs for this marathon).

The race starts deep in the forest with transport provided by authentic minibus taxis. I picked a hotel close to the pickup point and strolled through early so as to avoid the queues. The race attracts almost 5,000 half marathoners (many of whom are temporary licences) but far fewer, just over 500, marathon runners. The marathon starts at 7am, an hour earlier than the half but you need to get to the taxi rank early if you want to avoid the half marathon crush.

This does mean that there is quite a long wait in the forest before the start. However, complimentary tea and coffee is provided by one of the local church youth groups. There was also plenty of time to pay a couple of visits to ‘toilet town’ – a special section of the start venue crammed full of portaloos for those that want to avoid ‘knype in a bos’ during the race.

Whilst frank and open discussion about bowel movements may be the elephant in the room for normal society, my definition of a real runner has always been the ability to talk openly about one’s bowel movements without embarrassment. On that note, past organisers of the race used to have a lot of fun playing around with elephant poo.

They would import a good supply of elephant droppings from the Addo Elephant Park and strategically place these ‘bran muffins’ along the route. This tradition, which was started at the first race, sadly seems to have fallen away. Cheryl Torr, who ran the inaugural race, recalled that Malcolm Spence (the race organiser) told her after the race that he’d been out to Addo to collect elephant dung and placed it on the route. However, she was not aware of this and after seeing an impressive pile of elephant poo early on “was scared the whole race!”. Torr did finish as the second lady that day so maybe she had Spence to thank for this.

The race was about three weeks earlier than usual this year as the Western Cape school holidays were early for some reason and the organisers also decided to change the marathon to coincide with the start rather than the finish of the Oyster Festival. This meant that it was still dark when we started. The race has always been linked to the Oyster Festival and has one of the more interesting origin stories.

Very few people know that the colour ‘orange’ was named after the fruit and not the other way around. However, even fewer people know that Knysna Marathon Club was formed to host a marathon rather than the traditional path of a group of runners getting together to form a club and subsequently organising a marathon.

During a council meeting in 1983, the Knysna municipal councillors were discussing ideas to increase tourism during the quiet winter months. One bright spark suggested a ‘winter festival’ with a marathon being the cornerstone sporting drawcard. This idea was approved and eventually evolved into the hugely popular Knysna Oyster Festival we know today.

However, the councillors had a problem. They might have been old and wise but they were also very ‘well fed’ and none of them knew anything about running. They had however caught wind that there was a bloke living on Leisure Island who was ‘quite a good runner in his day’. It turned out that our Leisure Island runner was none other than Malcolm Spence, winner of the bronze medal in the 400 metres at the Olympic Games in Rome in 1960.

Spence was approached by the councillors. One of the other race founders, Kenny Wilkinson recalls, “He wasn’t interested in road running at all. However, he accepted the challenge, and quickly roped in a few friends and helpers to assist in organising a marathon.”

Their planning was well underway when they got some bad news. For those wondering whether the ASA running monopoly is anything new, all the way back in the early 1980s they were still claiming exclusive approval rights. The running mafia dons delivered the bad news that, “only clubs affiliated to Athletics SA were allowed to organise any running events in SA of over 5kms.”

Spence was left with two choices, get a club from the much larger neighbouring town of George to take over the race organisation or to form his own club. As history tells us, Spence chose the latter. The Knysna Marathon Club was conceived in early 1984 and the Knysna Forest Marathon was born a few months later.

It can be very cold waiting for the start and runners are encouraged to wear old clothes or buy blankets to donate to the local community. There is a special truck where I deposited several layers of clothes which always pleases my wife as she is continually complaining about the clutter in my cupboards.

However, any risk of getting cold is mitigated by the first 3km which are a steady climb before the route flattens out for 3km. What follows is another 2km climb and then the route flattens out again. At the 11.5k mark, you veer right onto the road to Uniondale for 2 x 2km of dog’s leg.

When I ran my 10^th Knysna in 2013, the marshal at the turnaround point was ‘asleep on the job’ and the front runners got halfway to Uniondale before they realised their mistake. I remember thinking ‘this is not right’ and, after not seeing a distance board for a kilometre, managed to turn the field around by shouting ‘we’ve gone the wrong way’ and waving my arms confidently like an air traffic controller. It was quite a surreal experience seeing a wave of runners change direction but the unfortunate result was that I immediately went from being in the top 10% of the field to being stone last.

After the dog’s leg, there is a violent 1km plummet onto Kom-se-Pad, a road that you follow for much of the rest of the race. The exact origins of the name remain unknown but consensus is that the road was named after a well-known woodcutter in the early 1900s.

This section of the course comprises rising undulations to the highest point (489m) at 24km (and a spectacular viewing spot). What follows is 8.5km of downhill. Some of it is gentle but there are plenty of quad crushing, glute smashing plunges. The last kilometre in particular is an absolutely brutal ‘heavy vehicles engage lowest gear’ spiralling plummet to the Gouna River.

Earlier in the race I had bumped into David and Sandra Case and ended up running much of the race in their company. Both of them had run Comrades a couple of weeks beforehand and were doing a ‘route tester’ for their forthcoming ‘1000 Kays of Caring’ challenge where, together with Emmanuel Makhafola, they’d be running 1000km in 21 days to raise money for Siphila Sonke organisation in Grabouw.

Aside: Putting it Out There for those who Put it out There

The 1000 Kays of Caring team raised over R450,000 for the Siphila Sonke charity in Grabouw which exceeded their stretch target. I sponsored a rand per kilometre if David added a Speedo day to the itinerary which, as you can see below, he duly honoured.

However, they are still looking for a long term sustainability partner so I am putting this request out there on their behalf in the hope that it finds the right pair of eyes, “Ideally our efforts would have found their way across the desk of an executive of Tiger Brands, of Pioneer Foods, etc. who could really make a massive difference at a very small cost to themselves.  The fact remains that Siphila Sonke still needs help with the costs of the food parcels in order to ensure sustainability.”

Whilst sightings of the last remaining Knysna elephant are incredibly rare, a picture of ‘downhill David’ running on an uphill is even rarer. According to Wikipedia, there have been 140 photos taken of the last Elephant cow from this subspecies by hidden camera-traps in 38 different locations in the forest. However, from thousands of cameras at decades of running events across the country, the photo below is the only known picture of David running on an uphill.

I met (and ran with) David during the 2019 Golden Gate Marathon where I noted, “From what I observed, David relies heavily on gravity and is unbeatable (and unstoppable) on the downhills.” This does however pose a significant safety risk during the various Knysna Forest plummets. Whilst it is always pleasant to bump into David on a run, you really don’t want David bumping into you on a downhill. With the steep, sharp turns and only low stone wall barriers separating the freewheeling marathon runner from certain death, even a slight tap as David thundered past near terminal velocity and it would be Case-closed.

The beautiful babbling brook at the bottom of the valley is a picture of serenity itself. Once you’ve managed to come to a screeching halt on the causeway, is a mandatory photo stop amongst the tranquillity of Mother Nature’s magnificence. However, the peace and serenity are short-lived as reverence to Mother Nature is quickly replaced by mournful mutterings of ‘mother …’ as runners see the monstrous hill that is in front of them.

The repayment after the nosedive to the river is a long, steep 3km climb with a few hundred metres of extra interest added onto the top where one reaches Simola. It is here that you join the half marathon route. ‘Back in the day’ I was quick enough to still find (and pass) plenty of half marathoners over the last few kilometres home but 2024 Running Mann had an open road and even the giant bottle of Old Brown Sherry at the Rawson table was long gone.

By the time you get to 36km, your legs have already been completely annihilated by the steepness and sharpness of the downhills. However, you still have one final cervix shattering descent to survive. For those that can stomach it (or have not left their stomach somewhere on the 3km drop down to the lagoon), they were still serving shots at the last drinks station. One of the marshals here had clearly gotten vrot on the tots and leeringly told me, “Fourways, I only know one way!”. However, I ran on quickly in case he tried to show me.

From there, it’s a stroll under the troll bridge and up the stairs onto the N2 main road for two pancake flat kilometres adjacent to the lagoon and into the finish area on the Knysna High School sports fields.

After the race, the cultured and sophisticated can swallow oysters freshly cultivated from the Knysna lagoon with a chardonnay chaser. Since I am neither cultured nor sophisticated, I headed straight for the beer tent where I naturally found David and Sandra. Despite the stereotype, I have found that most Pirates runners prefer beer to rum after the run.

After an 11 year break with 151 marathons in-between, it’s nice to reaffirm one’s memories – the Knysna Forest Marathon is still one of the best organised and most beautiful marathons in the world. My family is definitely in store for some future ‘Garden Route holidays’ and I would recommend that any marathon running parent start selling the family on the idea of a trip to the Knysna Oyster Festival.

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